Battle Communication!
by kaIshekk
Summary: Forty young tennis players are taken to an island and forced to kill each other. Featuring just about everyone. Battle Royale story with a twist. Warning: Character deaths, obviously.
1. Chapter 1

It's because I'm just that sadistic.

Summary: Forty young tennis players are taken to an island and forced to kill each other. Featuring just about everyone. Battle Royale story with a twist. Warning: Character deaths, obviously.

Disclaimer: I do not own PoT, nor the idea of _Battle Royale_. I don't even own the title of this fic. I got it from the song _Battle Communication!!_ by Jam Project, because it's one of my favorite songs and the atmosphere fits this fic pretty well.

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It was in the middle of the night when Oishi Syuichiro was abruptly roused from a sweet dream. It involved cooking and eggs—a lot of eggs. Pity it couldn't last.

Rubbing his eyes with a yawn, Oishi slowly sat up, subconsciously pondering what had, in the first place, waken him up. He was a light sleeper, and almost anything could disturb his sleep, but _something_ told him that, this time, it was no sobbing little sister or hungry pet that caused his awakening. That _something_ could be the hushed whispering voices he could hear around him, the nagging feeling in his gut that something was amiss, or perhaps the pain in his head, stomach and neck.

It was normal for Oishi to have headaches or stomachaches. It was not normal for him to have neck-aches. In fact, it was not normal for anyone to have neck-aches, as we can infer from the fact that no such word was even invented.

Still groggy, Oishi looked around at his surroundings, trying to figure out where he was. This certainly couldn't be his room. For one moment, he was reminded of those horribly graphic video games that his cousins loved but he couldn't stand. The large room looked exactly like his definition of a haunted place—no windows, moonlight leaking in from a crack in the ceiling, spattered spots on the floor of what looked like blood, graffiti all over the walls and—what seemed to Oishi—scratches made by the nails of someone clawing at them. The only exit was a steel door at the far end of the room, right beside a giant chalkboard. The presence of the chalkboard as well as various chairs and desks scattered around the room gave it a classroom-like appearance. Except that a classroom with no windows would be too unhealthy for the students.

All in all, it was a scene one would expect to see in horror movies like _Saw_. As Oishi lifted a hand to touch his neck, he felt some device made of cold metal, and shivered because this, too, reminded him of _Saw_. In fact, he was now a hundred percent sure that he was in a real-life _Saw_ movie.

He was confused. Didn't the mastermind in the _Saw_ series capture only people who did not cherish life? Oishi cherished life. He loved every minute of it—well, almost every minute of it. And Oishi also found it very hard to imagine the _Saw_ serial killer speaking Japanese. It was just… not right.

Touching his throbbing head, Oishi turned around, surprised to see that his friends from the tennis club were also present. His eyes met Tezuka's, and Tezuka, who was at the far side of the classroom, lifted an eyebrow in an expression that meant "don't ask me, must be that Fuji Syusuke again".

Then Oishi realized that his tennis club-mates and he were not the only ones in this room.

"Hey, dane." A boy with duck-like lips tapped Oishi on the shoulder.

"Who are you?" Oishi stared in surprise.

"Well, well, isn't this Oishi Syuichiro from Seigaku?" Another voice put in. Oishi suddenly remembered that the person with the duck-like lips was Yanagisawa from St. Rudolph and the second person was Mizuki, also from St. Rudolph. He wondered what they were doing here. Mizuki had the same question.

"What are you guys doing here?" he asked, kicking Yanagisawa aside to get closer to Oishi.

"Who treats his own teammate like that?" Oishi exclaimed in shock.

"Yeah, dane," Yanagisawa complained.

"_Everyone_ treats Yanagisawa like this, nfu," Mizuki shrugged.

"I will also like to know what is going on here." A gentle, soft voice came floating from behind, sending pleasant shivers down Oishi's spine. He turned around to see Yukimura Seiichi, captain of Rikkai Dai Fuzoku.

"We are all wearing collars," Yukimura observed with his ever-kind smile.

"Wow, so we are. Mine is purple!" Mizuki cried out happily. Unable to twist his neck to such an angle that he could see his collar properly, he whipped out a hand mirror to check this new ornament. "Look, there are many buttons on it, nfu." He tried to press one of them, but stopped mid-action because someone hollered, "STOP!"

It was Tachibana Kippei from Fudoumine. Oishi wondered just how many tennis players from different schools were gathered here.

"What do you mean, nfu?" Mizuki demanded, feeling wronged because he wanted _so much_ to try these buttons.

"Haven't you got eyes?" Tachibana shouted, forgetting to be polite in such an extreme situation. "Look, it says right here by the button: _Press this and the collar will explode_. You want to be blown up or what?" Because it was difficult for him to see his own collar, he picked up Ibu Shinji's collar to explain and demonstrate effectively. Since Shinji's collar was, obviously, connected to Shinji, he picked up Shinji as well.

Shinji, facing a major suffocating crisis, went on mumbling as if nothing was wrong. "Buchou, put me down, or I'll break my neck. If I break my neck, I won't be able to hang myself in the future if I want. If I won't be able to hang myself in the future, I—"

"If you break your neck, you'll be dead. You won't need to worry about hanging yourself," Kamio pointed out curtly from a corner.

"Anyway, this is a strange situation we're in. We must be careful," Tachibana concluded, putting Shinji down.

"Tachibana is right," Tezuka said righteously. "We must not let our guard down. Is everyone awake now? I remember that we were playing tennis at school, and I do not know how we got here. Do any of you have an idea?"

"We were playing tennis too, and then all went dark—oh wow, we must be kidnapped!" Saeki from Rokkaku grinned, looking quite proud of being kidnapped.

Shishido from Hyoutei frowned. "But there're so many of us. Who'd want to kidnap so many students?"

"I have a pretty good idea what this is all about," Inui from Seigaku and Renji from Rikkai both stated, standing up at exactly the same time.

"You first," Inui offered.

"No, it's all right. You can go first," Renji declined politely.

"Nah, you go first."

"No, no, you first."

"Stop acting like lovers on a first date!" Everyone yelled and threw things at them. Bane and Momo, finding themselves situated conveniently close to the chalkboard, happily picked up chalks of different colors and aimed at the two data collectors.

"You go first."

"No, you first."

"Well, we might as well say it together."

"Yes." The two turned to the others, Inui pushing his glasses and Renji smiling mysteriously. "This must be Battle Royale."

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TBC. Thanks for reading. Reviews are very welcome:) This may be very long, so please tell me what you think!


	2. Chapter 2

"Yes." The two data collectors turned towards the others. Inui pushed his glasses up, and Renji smiled mysteriously. "This must be _Battle Royale_."

"Battle Royale? What's Battle Royale? Can you eat it?" Momo asked wonderingly.

"Battle Royale means throwing a bunch of students on an island and making them kill each other," Inui explained. Renji was about to continue for him, but stopped abruptly when everyone was startled by the sound of the door being opened.

Most of them were expecting to see a rather insane looking foreign person walk in, but instead the person who walked in was Seigaku's Coach Ryuuzaki. Behind her came several soldiers, all good-looking and wearing uniforms. The tennis regulars from various schools did not care a bit about those handsome soldiers of course, because they were male themselves and it wasn't really a good time to think about handsome soldiers anyhow.

"Well, well, well. Very smart, Inui and Yanagi. Just like I expected." Ryuuzaki applauded mockingly. "They're right, everyone. You are elected to participate in the newest annual Battle Royale."

Even though he was not completely sure what that meant exactly, Oishi felt a strange sense of foreboding. After all, though the word "royale" sounded all right, "battle" certainly did not seem like a happy thing. This_ Battle Royale _was probably no simple tennis training camp.

"Like they said, the main object of this game is to kill everyone until you are the last one standing," Ryuuzaki explained. "Simple, huh? We've got this DVD here that will tell you all the rules." With that, she snapped her fingers, and some soldiers carried in a television and a DVD player. Ryuuzaki then sat down, the handsome soldiers surrounding her, as if afraid that rabid contestant would suddenly pounce on her.

A cute girl wearing pink kitten ears appeared on the screen. She was standing on a prairie, surrounded by a group of zealous monkeys.

"Hello everyone!" Her voice was sweet and clear, fitting her attractive appearance.

"Hello!" All the monkeys screamed in reply, jumping up and down in excitement. _Must be dubbed,_ Inui decided and took mental notes because he had no notebook.

"Now I am going to announce the basic rules of the Battle Royale. Your names will be called by Japanese alphabetical order, each person having two minutes to get a head start before the next is called. That way, you won't all start fighting outside the door and make a mess. All of you will get a really cute bag! Isn't that great?"

"Great!" The monkeys screamed like they were Kawamura.

"Besides your weapon, there will be _absolutely nothing_ in your bag!"

"YAAY!"

"Wait," Inui said, raising his hand. "In all the Battle Royales I've heard of, shouldn't there be food and water and maybe a compass or some other stuff in the bag? Surely there should be a map—"

"We don't have enough money to get you all this stuff, so shut up and watch the DVD. We've spent a heck lot of time filming it. Even Steven Spielberg volunteered to help," Ryuuzaki snapped.

Inui wanted to ask more questions, but seeing that the soldiers had rifles he reluctantly shut up and slowly sank back to his seat. It was a Steven Spielberg film, after all.

"You will all get different weapons," the girl with kitten ears continued enthusiastically, "so don't blame us even if you get horrible ones! You have three days. When the seventy-second hour is past, if more than one of you are alive, everyone's collar will explode and you'll all die! Isn't that wonderful? Therefore, you must do your best to kill everyone you see, until you are the only one left. Is that clear?"

"YAAAY!" The monkeys all squealed in delight.

Oishi could only stare, feeling nauseated, tears threatening to overflow his green eyes. He was shocked that the girl and the monkeys could actually announce such a terrible, inhumane thing so happily, as if it was all good fun. How could anyone be so sadistic? He could not believe that the coach he had always trusted had betrayed them and pushed them into such a situation, and neither could he believe that his teammates, whom he had always cared so much about, were soon going to become his enemies. But he had to believe it—this was no television game show, but reality before his eyes. It was ironic, so ironic. It was a matter of life and death, yet the monkeys and the girl were screaming "YAAAY!" like it were a children's program.

Oishi swallowed hard, covering his tear-stained face with his hands, not daring to meet the gaze of any of his friends. He knew that the others must be as frightened and shocked as he was, and he did not want to see them like that. But still, he _had_ to see them, he _had_ to exchange assuring glances with his friends, to comfort them and tell them that it would be all right, though he knew that it would not. He tilted his head, setting eyes on some Hyoutei tennis team members. He wondered how they were feeling?

"YAAAAY!" Jiroh and Gakuto screamed, dancing and jumping around like the monkeys in the video.

"Ore-sama is definitely going to win," Atobe stated. "Be amazed by ore-sama's amazing killing prowess!"

Oishi's mouth fell open. He realized that there were too many crazy people in Hyoutei, and felt thankful that none of his teammates were this insane.

"YAAAY!" Eiji shouted, jumping up and down and doing acrobatics in midair. Oishi hung his head in shame for not teaching his doubles partner well enough.

"Trying to take the collar off by violence will cause it to explode, so you better not try that. We will keep you updated with the latest news via broadcast every six hours, so you'll know how many are left for you to kill! What's better, you'll all be on TV! There're cameras everywhere on the island. Your parents, your brothers and sisters and friends will all get to see your performance, so give it your best and don't disappoint them!"

"YAAAY!"

Oishi could hardly see the screen as more tears poured from his eyes.

"That's all, I think. Have a good time and enjoy your killing!" The girl smiled as the monkeys cheered on (the girl fed them bananas as a reward) and the show came to an end. Coach Ryuuzaki picked up the DVD package and read the descriptions lazily.

"It says here that there are 'behind the scenes' shots, NG cuts, exciting teasers and an interview with Steven Spielberg. Which do you guys want to watch?"

"We don't need—" Tezuka began, but stopped abruptly when he realized that the others were actually arguing over this.

"It's _Steven Spielberg_, after all," Yagyuu from Rikkai was stating solemnly.

"But I like NG parts more," Kirihara told his senpai.

"Fighting again? Whatever. Since you can't seem to decide, we might as well watch the teaser," Coach Ryuuzaki shrugged. While everyone was shouting that it was unfair and that if Coach Ryuuzaki had intended to decide herself all the way she shouldn't even have bothered to ask them in the first place, the screen turned dark and a deep, calm voice with a beautiful English accent began to speak.

"We need Japanese subtitles," Momo, who obviously did not do very well in English class, implored. Coach Ryuuzaki rolled her eyes and complied. The words "_Battle Royale: memorable scenes from the past games_" immediately appeared on the screen, as well as two girls who did not look the least Japanese. They were standing on the edge of a cliff. It might be a clip from an American Battle Royale.

"If we cannot live together, we die together," one said to the other, tears cascading elegantly down her cheeks.

"We'll still be sisters in heaven," the other assured her. They held hands and leapt down, disappearing into the darkness.

The screen turned black again. This time, a fat, nerdy blonde boy carrying a rifle towered over several guys who were writhing on the ground and bleeding madly. One guy tried to beg for mercy, but was shot anyway.

"Serves you right for bullying me and taking my lunch money," the fat boy muttered and turned to leave. But before he could move at all, someone ran a sword through his flabby stomach.

"You killed my boyfriend. You must pay!" A girl yelled at him, all the while sobbing like a maniac.

The screen turned dark once more. It brightened to reveal two guys standing under a tree.

"So we're the only two left, aren't we, Yuu?" A lanky, light-haired boy murmured, fiddling with his bazooka.

"I guess so. Either you die or I die, or we die together," the boy referred to as Yuu sighed, leaning against the tree. "There's only an hour left, Hiroki."

"I didn't mean to kill so many people," Hiroki whispered. "I didn't want to. Believe me? Please?"

"Neither did I," Yuu stared at the ground. "Listen, you have to believe me too. I killed Yuya because _he_ acted first. Osamu fell down the manhole himself. I didn't push him. _Really_."

"I believe you," Hiroki said, facing his friend of many years.

"I believe you too," Yuu looked up at the sky. "So… it's time for our final battle, isn't it?"

Hiroki nodded. They stood in fighting position, one holding his bazooka, one holding a ruler that was fifteen centimeters long. They knew that this was a fight between men, a battle representing their pride and their friendship.

"So that's the end of our teaser. If you want to know who won this battle, you should go to see this movie in the theaters—that is, if you get home alive," coach Ryuuzaki drawled and shut down the DVD player.

"Judging from the weapons, it's kind of obvious," Yanagi pointed out.

Coach Ryuuzaki ignored him. "Anyway, now that this is over, anyone got a question?"

Hands immediately shot up all over the room.

"Okay, Inui, you go first," Coach Ryuuzaki decided. She was the coach of Seigaku, after all, so she had a right to play favorites.

"Why Battle Royale? I know that the past games were held because the youth were too rebellious and uncontrollable and the Battle Royale was supposed to help lower the crime rate, but I remember that the law was already—"

"It has nothing to do with the law," Ryuuzaki snapped. "You're here because a psychology professor from some university needs to do a psychology experiment."

"Oh." Inui nodded and sat down.

"Well, your turn, yes, you with orange hair that looks like a bird nest," Ryuuzaki continued as if she was hosting a call-in show.

"Me? Lucky!" Sengoku from Yamabuki exclaimed. "What prizes do the winner get?"

Oishi stared, stupefied. Here Sengoku was in a life-and-death situation, and he was thinking of prizes!

"The winner will get free chocolate for his whole life, a Mercedes Benz that would carry twenty people, and a newly-built summer house. Next!" Ryuuzaki pointed at Aoi Kentaro from Rokkaku.

"Why are there no girls?" The captain of Rokkaku asked.

"That's because we have no money to offer tampons," Ryuuzaki explained. "No more questions? Good. Before we start, you must write _I solemnly swear I will kill the others_ and sign your name a hundred times on these pieces of paper. This is to make sure you understand the situation and set your mind on killing."

Muffled sobs could be heard throughout the room as some students finally came to realize that this was not a simple comedy show but a real, serious situation. The room was soon silent except for the constant scratching of pencils upon paper. No one wanted to write the words, but they couldn't _not_ write them—there were guns pointed at them after all.

Of course, there were still a few who would probably never grasp the gravity of the situation.

"Do we have to write our own name?" Kirihara piped up. "Kirihara Akaya is such a _long_ name! Can't I write Marui Bunta or something?"

"Shut up." Ryuuzaki whacked him on the head. "Last year there was this Mary-Suella Thunderbolt Bonaparte Einhundertachtundneunzehn Yanagishita Goooooooooooogle in the game. Did she complain? No! Shut up and write your name!"

Kirihara shut up and wrote down his name a hundred times, though he took pains to write as slowly and meticulously as he could, because after he finished, the game would soon begin.

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TBC. Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome:D

My computer just crashed, so updates might be slow:( I'm using my home computer now, but it feels weird because there are like ten people in my house and I don't want them to see what I'm doing...:(


	3. Chapter 3

"Since, in all the past programs of Battle Royale, there was always at least one contestant who came back to the base to attack the hosts, we have decided to make the area here a forbidden area as soon as you all leave. Anyone who returns will be automatically blown to pieces, so you better not try anything clever," Coach Ryuuzaki announced. "Now it's about time for the game to start. We'll call your names by order of Japanese alphabet, starting from the people whose last names start with A and ending with those whose last names start with NN." Though no one could have had a last name that starts with NN.

Everyone quickly started calculating in their heads the order in which they were going to leave in and considered carefully the people who would leave before and after them. After all, the order was important—the earlier they left, the more time they had to explore the island and find assets, while the ones who got out later had the more time to calm down and make plans.

"Most of us Rikkai people are going to leave relatively later than the others. We can quickly discuss where to meet as the others leave. This can be an advantage for us," Yanagi Renji murmured under his breath to Marui, who was beside him, as he ran the list of Rikkai names in his mind. Marui, however, did not reply to him because he did not hear what Renji said and could not read lips. Marui thought that he must be jinxing others and did not want to disturb him.

"Seems like I'm the last one," Yukimura said with a gentle smile.

"It's all right, Seiichi. I'll wait for you," Sanada declared.

"How touching," Ryuuzaki, who actually loved watching these moving life-and-death scenes, sighed contently. "Now I'm going to call the first name. Aoi Kentaro!"

In battle royales, usually the first to be called would be extremely nervous, staggering out with wobbly knees on the verge of tears. It was understandable—the first person has the right to be more nervous than the others, having had less time to be mentally prepared.

But it seemed that such a problem did not exist in Aoi Kentaro's situation.

"I'm first! First! YAAAY! I'm first! Here I go! I'm under so much pressure! Bye-bye, everyone!" Aoi screamed ecstatically, running towards the front of the room where the door was, looking absolutely excited. One of the handsome soldiers tossed him a bag, which he caught without much trouble. He then proceeded to run out of the room, still shouting "First! First!" as he disappeared from everyone's sight. Even the soldiers, who had acted indifferent so far could only stare in stupor.

Now, if Aoi had been a Rikkai student, Yukimura would probably apologize to the other disturbed contestants with a smile and say: "Sorry, you see, our Kentaro's always like that," but Aoi was from Rokkaku. As a result, all the ever-happy Rokkaku people watched their captain leave, yelling "First! First!" with him, jumping up and down and waving their arms like they were at a rock concert.

"Well," Ryuuzaki, kind of disappointed that the first contestant to leave was not at all frightened and sobbing like he should be, cleared her throat and announced the second student to leave. At least _one_ of them should be frightened, or it would be no fun at all. You see, the best part of hosting a battle royale is watching the contestants' expressions as they leave the room.

"The second one to leave will be—Akutagawa Jiroh!"

Jiroh, of course, was quite disappointing also in terms of being scared and wobbly. In fact, he was anything but scared and wobbly. Though quiet when asleep, he was no less loud than Aoi Kentaro when awake.

"Yay, I'm second! YAAAY!" He cried, dancing to the front of the room to get his backpack.

"Jiroh, wait for ore-sama outside," Atobe ordered. "It's almost ore-sama's turn. Ore-sama leaves right after that gray-haired Akutsu."

"Gray-haired? My hair is gorgeous silver! _You_ have gray hair!" Akutsu roared.

"Ore-sama? Gray hair? You must be kidding. Ore-sama has amazing purple hair," Atobe exclaimed, and he had a fight with Akutsu then and there. The soldiers all looked fascinated. In all the battle royales that they had helped out before, none of them had contestants fighting amongst themselves _before_ they even left the room.

"Quiet!" Ryuuzaki shrieked, annoyed, and shot the two with a revolver. Luckily, as tennis players, both Akutsu and Atobe had great reflexes and dodged the bullet easily.

"Jiroh," Atobe continued ordering as if he had not just been shot at with a gun, "wait for ore-sama."

"Okay, I will," Jiroh nodded and fell asleep right away.

"Throw him out!" Ryuuzaki screamed in frustration, so three soldiers picked up Jiroh and threw him out.

Ryuuzaki was very unhappy. These tennis players were just too abnormal. She had to give up all hope on seeing someone crawling out of the room in fright or wetting his pants in fear. After all, the next one to go was Akutsu, and then Atobe. It was impossible to expect these two to show fear of any kind, because both would probably rather die than look weak in front of others. And after them was that Amane Hikaru from Rokkaku—he would definitely be making bad puns as he walked out of the room. No expecting fear from him either.

She had hoped that things would get better after she had gotten past the "A" people and progressed to the "I, U, E, O" people. She was wrong. Inui Sadaharu left muttering data under his breath. Ibu Shinji left muttering about the weather under his breath. Echizen Ryoma received a weapon even larger than himself so he stood outside waiting for Oishi, who could carry it for him. Oishi was the next person to leave, and Echizen knew that the soft-hearted Mother of Seigaku could never hurt him.

Of course, describing all the contestants one by one would take up too much effort and time, so we'll skip all those unimportant people and come to the touching farewell scene of Sanada Genichiro and Yukimura Seiichi.

"It's all right, Seiichi, I'll wait for you," Sanada stated as he strode confidently to the door.

"You watch out yourself. I'm the last to leave, and it won't be nice if you die before I even leave this room," Yukimura told Sanada with a reassuring smile. "Most of our teammates will leave around the same time I do, so I'm sure I'll be safe. You go and find Akaya. As long as we Rikkai people unite, we will find a way out."

"Shut up and leave!" Ryuuzaki yelled because she did not think sad goodbyes should take so long. Sanada nodded, turning again to look affectionately at Yukimura. "I promise, Seiichi, that we'll meet again."

"We will," Yukimura said and flashed a smile that only Sanada had ever seensmiled at Sanada and Sanada only.. Sanada felt like he was melting, even though there was no sun, as he stepped out into the unknown darkness.

"Well, well, you could have saved your goodbyes until later," Ryuuzaki glanced at her list. "Yukimura, you're next."

"Wh…what?" Shishido, who had considered the names of the leftover people carefully, was expecting to go next and had already in fact said goodbye to the remaining Hyoutei regulars. He was quite surprised it was Yukimura's name that was called instead.

Ryuuzaki explained, "You see, according to our list of weapons, Sanada's weapon is a samurai sword, and Yukimura's weapon is Sanada. Therefore, though the rules have it that you should leave by name order, Yukimura _has_ to leave with Sanada. Yukimura, go out now or your weapon will be gone soon."

"Okay. I'm sure Genichiro will wait for me," Yukimura smiled and left. Shishido could only gape and pray that the two Rikkai people would not ambush him two minutes later.

As fewer and fewer contestants were left, the remaining tennis players became more and more nervous. Many, instead of sitting on chairs like cool and composed contestants should, were moving around the room screaming and hiding. It could be because that now all the captains were gone and no one was left to keep everyone calm, or of course it could be because Niou had produced a few large spiders from somewhere and set them free in the room.

"Ahhh! Go away!" Mizuki cried, standing on a chair as if it could help him avoid the long-legged creatures.

"Gekokujou," Hiyoshi muttered expressionlessly.

"They're on me! Help!" Horio shrieked.

"Why are you here? Aren't everyone supposed to be regulars? And I don't see your two friends—whatever their names are—" Momo exclaimed in surprise when he saw that Horio was present.

"I'm different. I'm Horio with two years of Battle Royale experience," Horio declared as he climbed onto a desk to hide from the spiders.

Marui left, chewing his gum. Mizuki left, twirling his hair. Momo left with a shrug, Yanagi left with his eyes closed, and Yagyuu left looking like a gentleman.

Yanagisawa Shinya from St. Ruldolph was the last to go. He stood by the door waiting for his turn to enter the unknown world of Battle Royale.

"The game will begin as soon as you step out of this door," Ryuuzaki told him with a knowing smile. "Do your best."

"Yes, dane," Yanagisawa said.

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TBC. Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome. I'll put the student matrix up the next time.

To --: Thanks for the review:D Leave a name next time okay?:) Because "To --:" looks weird xD


	4. Student Matrix

**Student Matrix**

(By order of leaving the classroom)

Aoi Kentaro (Rokkaku)

Akutagawa Jiroh (Hyoutei)

Akutsu Jin (Yamabuki)

Atobe Keigo (Hyoutei)

Amane Hikaru (Rokkaku)

Inui Sadaharu (Seigaku)

Ibu Shinji (Fudoumine)

Echizen Ryoma (Seigaku)

Oishi Syuichiro (Seigaku)

Ootori Choutaro (Hyoutei)

Oshitari Yuushi (Hyoutei)

Kaidoh Kaoru (Seigaku)

Kabaji Munehiro (Hyoutei)

Kamio Akira (Fudoumine)

Kawamura Takashi (Seigaku)

Kikumaru Eiji (Seigaku)

Kisarazu Atsushi (St. Rudolph)

Kisarazu Ryou (Rokkaku)

Kirihara Akaya (Rikkai)

Kurobane Harukaze (Rokkaku)

Kuwahara Jackal (Rikkai)

Saeki Kojiro (Rokkaku)

Sanada Genichiro (Rikkai)

Yukimura Seiichi (Rikkai)

Shishido Ryou (Hyoutei)

Sengoku Kiyosumi (Yamabuki)

Tachibana Kippei (Fudoumine)

Dan Taiichi (Yamabuki)

Tezuka Kunimitsu (Seigaku)

Niou Masaharu (Rikkai)

Hiyoshi Wakashi (Hyoutei)

Fuji Syusuke (Seigaku)

Fuji Yuuta (St. Rudolph)

Horio Satoshi (Seigaku)

Marui Bunta (Rikkai)

Mizuki Hajime (St. Rudolph)

Mukahi Gakuto (Hyoutei)

Momoshiro Takeshi (Seigaku)

Yanagi Renji (Rikkai)

Yagyuu Hiroshi (Rikkai)

Yanagisawa Shinya (St. Rudolph)

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**Total count: 41 students**


	5. Chapter 5

Inui Sadaharu sat alone, carefully concealing himself between bushes. According to his calculations, the bushes were an ideal place to hide. Though there were a bit too many insects around, the chances of him being discovered was extremely low.

At that moment, he did not feel like meeting anyone.

He wondered how much time had passed since the game had begun. Even though he knew that it was probably less than an hour, it felt like a year had already passed. The people at the base had taken away his digital watch as well as his glasses, and it was impossible for him to tell the time without the handy equipment. Inui preferred everything to be in ordered numbers, and being unable to tell the time was seriously freaking him out.

All he knew was that it was night. The sky was peacefully dark, and the moon seemed to be smiling down at him. Like his mother.

Inui missed his mother.

He could remember exactly what his mother said to him that morning when he was leaving for school.

"Sadaharu, the possibility that there will be a traffic jam on your way to school is eighty percent."

"Mom, I walk to school. Traffic jams don't matter to me."

"Sadaharu, how could you talk back to mommy like that? Mommy is so sad! The possibility that Sadaharu doesn't love mommy anymore is—"

"Mom, that's enough, okay?" Inui sighed and left, slamming the door. His mother's voice could still be heard through it as Inui walked away. "Sadaharu, the possibility that you broke the door is—"

Inui regretted talking back to his mother. He wondered if his mother was watching him right now on television.

Inui did not like the prospect of himself being on television. It was a good thing though, he realized, that his mother could probably see him on TV.

He turned to face the closest video camera he could find, which was actually situated right in front of him, on a tree. He wanted his mother to see his face.

As one of the few in the group of contestants who had any knowledge of Battle Royale, Inui knew very well that it was nearly impossible that he would make it out of the place in one piece. Many times, contestants joined forces to fight against the hosts of the show, but each time, they failed. In such programs joining forces was useless. Those who believed that trust and alliances could solve all problems were just stupid and overly naïve.

Despite his sadistic image, Inui did not really want to hurt others. But perhaps, to live—to live, he might, just _might_, kill. He was no saintly person that would never do harm to other people. He knew that well. But still—

But still, his weapon was a _notebook_. A black notebook. What was he to do with a black notebook?

Sighing deeply, Inui lifted his eyes to meet the video camera on the tree in front of him.

"Mom, I love you. The possibility is 200 percent."

Inui's mom did not hear Inui's first and probably last "I love you". That night she and Inui's dad had gone out to a romantic dinner in a five-star restaurant and did not even turn on the TV.

--

Inui was not the only one currently situated in the bushes. His teammate Kikumaru Eiji was actually not far from him, but neither of them made much noise and therefore neither saw the other.

Eiji shivered in the cool wind. He did not even have the strength to check his weapon, and he did not want to use it anyway. All he knew was that it must be something horribly small, because his backpack weighed next to nothing.

He wrapped his arms around his own body, trying to make himself take up as little room as possible. There were stars in the sky.

He thought about his teammates. He did not know where they were. Inui was the first to leave out of all the Seigaku people, Oishi and Ryoma left together, and Kawamura left just before him—but Kawamura didn't stop to wait for him. Eiji was not entirely familiar with people from other schools. If they spotted him, the chances of his survival was probably low.

Eiji could only pray that he would not run into anyone.

--

Atobe and Kabaji found each other with no difficulty, since they had always been kind of telepathic. They were presently sitting around at the beach checking out each other's weapons. Jiroh was also there, but since he was asleep, neither Atobe nor Kabaji paid any attention to him.

Kabaji's weapon was an umbrella, which he found immensely amusing and was playing around with. Atobe thought that an umbrella was useless and proceeded to check Jiroh's bag. He knew that Jiroh wouldn't mind anyway.

"Light bag," he commented.

"Usu," Kabaji said, because he was Kabaji.

"Ah," Atobe murmured as he felt around in the bag until he touched a solid object. It felt like some kind of machine with a lot of parts. One side was smooth, but other places felt sharp and metallic. Atobe then realized what it must be: a racecar. Feeling nostalgic, Atobe fished the racecar out of Jiroh's bag and admired it. It was shiny and looked like the ideal racecar of any little boy's dreams. When Atobe was little, he had thousands of these racecars. His was always the fastest, the most expensive, and the best among his classmates'. He chuckled as he remembered how everyone used to envy him.

But this was not the time and place to play with racecars, and besides there were no batteries. What could one do with a racecar that had no batteries?

Atobe considered this. He could break the plastic part into bits and used the sharp parts as weapons. He could use the gears to—and he stopped abruptly.

No. Why is ore-sama thinking this? Ore-sama is not one to kill his teammates. Jiroh and Kabaji will never harm ore-sama. How can ore-sama ever betray them? Ore-sama is supposed to protect his teammates!

Atobe shook his head and decided to forget about it, and then opened his own backpack to see what was inside. To his surprise, his weapon was a bikini.

Atobe was very happy. A bikini was a perfect weapon when one needed to strangle someone, after all. Atobe did not carry it on him like he should a good weapon, though. Instead, he put it on immediately.

"Be awed by ore-sama's amazing bikini," he told Kabaji.

"Usu," Kabaji said.

Now, haven't you noticed a problem? That's right. When people put on bikinis, they usually do it in two steps:

Step number one, take their clothes off.

Step number two, put on the bikini.

Here, Atobe skipped number one and proceeded straight to number two. Why? Simple. Atobe was never wearing any clothes in the first place. The others were actually in the same situation, which was why none of them really wanted to meet other people. The reason Eiji was feeling cold was because he was, in fact, naked, and Inui's watch and glasses were certainly not the only things that were taken from him—his whole attire was gone.

Ryuuzaki Sumire, watching the game progress on monitor screens, did not notice this however, because she was old and had bad eyesight. Besides, the monitor screens came in black and white, so it was difficult to see things.

Ryuuzaki called several soldiers to her side. "Why are they all hiding instead of killing each other? Shouldn't they begin already?

"Um, it might be because… because after we took off their clothes to fit those cords of the bomb in the collar on them, we forgot to put them back on, madam," one soldier stuttered, looking scared to death. "So… so maybe they are too shy…too shy to come out naked, madam."

"Idiots! How could you have forgotten such an important thing?" Ryuuzaki yelled. "How are we going to do our experiment like this? Die!" She picked up a gun and shot the soldier in the head.

"They won't start killing this way," Ryuuzaki muttered. "I'll find a way to get everyone moving." She picked up a microphone, which was supposed to be connected with all the loudspeakers on the island. She was planning to use it once every six hours, but she would have to start broadcasting now.

* * *

**Hour 1**

**40 contestants remaining**

Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome. I hope I did not get any names wrong.

To loove it!: Thanks for the review! I know I'm always killing characters :D there must be something wrong with me...

To kalista jia: Thanks for the review! I've not really seen/read the whole original Battle Royale movie/book/manga before... I'm afraid I'll get nightmares. (Then why am I writing this?)


	6. Chapter 6

Despite the fact that he was let out of the classroom much later than Ootori Choutaro, Shishido Ryou from Hyoutei somehow managed to bump into his kouhai and doubles partner as soon as he headed into the forest, which he judged was the safest place to conceal himself. Together, the two luckily found a cave to hide in and were pretty much planning to spend the rest of their lives—which probably weren't going to be too long—there.

After much pointless chatting, Shishido sighed, "Choutaro, what's your weapon?"

"Uh, I don't know," Ootori murmured, not having even bothered to check his backpack yet. As a self-proclaimed humanitarian, it was seriously against Ootori's standards to kill people, so using the weapon was out of the question anyway. He had actually been hoping to just sit and chat with his senpai for the rest of the three days and die happily. Shishido bringing up the subject of weapons destroyed Ootori's little world of false security and sent shivers up the poor fourteen-year-old's spine. It occurred to him that Shishido _might_ not want to stay put the entire time and_ might_ actually be yearning to kill somebody. And if his Shishido-senpai was to kill somebody—Ootori could see no reason why it wouldn't be him. After all, he was sitting right beside Shishido, and he wouldn't fight even to save his own life, so he was pretty easy target.

Ootori started imagining the words that would be engraved on his tombstone: _Ootori Choutaro (210 B.C.-2008 A.D.)_—No, that was completely wrong. Too long.

"I haven't checked mine yet either," Shishido said, reaching for Ootori's bag without waiting for his consent. "Let's check out yours first. Wow, here's a bag of, uh, drinking straws. Must be your weapon."

_Drinking straws? _Ootori was freaking out on the inside. Even though he was not planning to use his weapon anyway, he would at least feel better if it were something nice. _Drinking straws—I can't defend myself with a bag of lousy drinking straws!_

Being Ootori, it never really struck him that he could just escape instead of sitting around waiting for Shishido to kill him.

"Come on, Choutaro, let's see what I got," Shishido went on, feeling around in his big backpack. "Hey, it's got an instruction booklet."

_Must be a gun of some sort. Otherwise it wouldn't have an instruction booklet,_ Ootori thought to himself. He always knew that he was going to die young. He started saying goodbye in his mind to his dog, his daddy and his mommy.

"Hmm." Shishido held the small booklet close to his face, attempting to read the tiny letters. "Ah, it's a kendama!" And then he fished out the said kendama. It was a traditional Japanese toy that looked like a little wooden stick, with a ball fastened to it by a piece of string.

"Here're the instructions for several basic tricks," Shishido explained to Ootori, who looked stupefied. "I don't need this though, because I'm already an expert at kendama. Watch this, Choutaro, we call this trick 'Around the world'. It's the hardest trick ever. You wanna try?"

Ootori was still recovering from shock. He had been _so_ certain that he would be shot in the head by his Shishido-senpai.

"But Choutaro, I wonder how can this serve as a weapon?" Shishido asked, finally realizing this problem after playing around with the kendama for some time. "I can hardly protect myself with this."

"It's… It's all right, senpai," Ootori quickly declared, feeling hotheaded and brave all of a sudden. "I'll protect you. With, uh, with my bag of straws."

Shishido laughed out loud at this totally unrealistic statement, and Ootori began to laugh too in embarrassment, but a good sort of embarrassment. Their laughter echoed in the dark cave, lightening the rather horrible atmosphere.

Then they both stopped laughing because a frighteningly loud sound boomed from nowhere. It was the broadcast system of the host of the show. Because they happened to be situated very close to the loudspeakers, the Silver Pair felt pretty much like they were at a rock concert and were half deaf for the next few hours.

"But senpai, didn't Ryuuzaki-sensei say that she would broadcast once every six hours? I don't know the time but six hours couldn't have passed already," Ootori, who always remembered all the rules, pointed out.

"Weird. Let's hear what she has to say." Shishido shrugged.

"Mike test, mike test. One, two, three. Hello everyone!" The voice of Coach Ryuuzaki came blasting into their ears. "We have discovered a serious problem: none of you are wearing anything, so none of you dare to come out and compete."

Shishido and Ootori looked at each other and exclaimed, "She's right!"

Shouldn't they have noticed this a long time ago?

"Therefore, we are dropping some clothes on the little hill at section A8 by helicopter in a few minutes. If you want to get dressed, head there immediately. If the early birds take all the clothes, you late ones won't get anything, so hurry your lazy asses and leave for A8 right now!"

Shishido and Ootori stared at each other after the announcement came to an end. As soon as they realized that they were naked, they had grabbed their backpacks to cover their –beep-s, so staring at each other was not as awkward as you would have imagined.

"So Choutaro, what should we do? I don't know where A8 is since we have no map, but I do know that there's a little hill not very far from here."

"But senpai, with our weapons, or lack thereof, won't we get killed as soon as we leave this cave?"

"Yeah… but I do want to wear something. If we don't hurry, people might take away everything, and we won't even have underwear to wear."

"Senpai, I'd rather be underwear-less than dead."

"Well okay, Choutaro, you stay here and wait for me. I'll go grab you some really cool underwear," Shishido decided, and started to head towards the entrance of the cave, bravely holding his kendama.

"But senpai!"

"Yeah, I know, I know. Did you really think I would grab you only underwear? _Of course_ I'll get you clothes also. Or maybe some really cool sungla—"

"Senpai!" Ootori, always polite, interrupted Shishido in mid-sentence for the first time in his life. "Senpai, this is not a grand sale or something. You might die! If you die, you won't be able to bring me cool underwear. Don't you understand that?"

"I know." Shishido sighed deeply. "But what should we do then? I don't want to stay naked. We're on TV."

"I can't let you go alone, senpai. Let's go together," Choutarou unwillingly concluded.

Then the two exchanged high fives for no reason and headed towards the hill, because people just can't do without clothes.

* * *

**Hour 1**

**40 contestants remaining**

To be continued. Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome.

To kalista jia: Thanks for the review:) Sorry, no YukiSana in this chapter. There are so many people, you see…

To loove it!!: Thanks for the review xD Yes, they are naked. This is why this fic must not be drawn into a comic.


	7. Chapter 7

Sengoku Kiyosumi from Yamabuki was very happy after he heard the broadcast. "Lucky! I'm right here at A8." He had no map, like everyone else, but there was a sign beside him that read "A8", so he couldn't be anywhere else.

As soon as he finished the sentence, a helicopter flew over him and a large cardboard box was tossed down, landing five centimeters in front of Sengoku. He was very lucky that it did not hit his head, but not especially lucky because he was always lucky anyway.

He rummaged through the box and realized that there were a lot more clothes inside than he had imagined. "What should I wear? Hmm… might as well take the whole box with me."

So Sengoku picked up the boxful of clothing and started to leave. After all, he assumed that everyone would head to where he was for clothes, and he would rather try out everything by himself than deal with other people. Before he could go very far, however, a commanding voice stopped him in his tracks.

"Freeze! Put the box down or I'll fire!"

Sengoku froze and put the box down. It wouldn't do to do otherwise, because he knew that the voice belonged to Seigaku's Echizen Ryoma, and he also knew that Seigaku's only freshman regular had an extremely large weapon. Ryoma had left the classroom with his senpai, Oishi, but Oishi had hung around the starting point to wait for other teammates and Ryoma had been wandering about on his own for some time. By pure luck he had stumbled upon Sengoku and his box of treasures, and by pure luck his large weapon was a bazooka, so he decided to put it into use.

"Aw, don't fire at me. Here," Sengoku stuck a hand into the box and took out a black tennis shirt.

"I don't want a black one," Ryoma, seeing that Sengoku probably did not have a better weapon than his (actually not many weapons could be better than a bazooka. Though it was heavy, it was handy in many ways), began to bargain. "It's way too hot to wear black under the sun."

"But at night you can stay unseen by the enemy if you wear black," Sengoku pointed out calmly.

"True." Ryoma considered this and nodded.

"I'll give you both a white one and a black one then. You can switch." Sengoku pulled out a white jersey and handed it to Ryoma.

"Thanks." Ryoma took it with the hand that was not supporting the bazooka and stared. "Wait, this is a Seigaku jersey. Is this whole box full of our stuff?"

"Makes sense. They said they had no money, so they probably were too poor to buy new clothes and simply packed all our clothes into this box," Sengoku agreed as he looked at the black tennis shirt in his hand. "So this must be a Fudoumine jersey. Lucky! Fudoumine jerseys are so cool. I'm _so_ going to wear this."

"Don't you think wearing other people's shirts is disgusting?" Ryoma smirked.

"No," Sengoku replied, enthusiastically taking items out of the box one by one, which resulted in clothing littered everywhere around them.

"This one has a little notebook in the pocket. Must be Inui-senpai's," Ryoma muttered, picking up a pair of Seigaku jeans. "Won't fit me. Where's mine?"

"Here." Sengoku tossed him the smallest pair of Seigaku jeans in the heap.

"Thanks," Ryoma said and put it on. The two had apparently come to a truce because trying out other people's clothes was just too fun.

"Look, this Yamabuki shirt looks so awesome with Rikkai trousers," Sengoku exclaimed and showed Ryoma his newest experiment.

"You have no fashion sense." Ryoma smirked because, though he could not see how the colors matched very well in the dark, he could imagine how terrible Yamabuki shirts would look with Rikkai trousers. Definitely not a good combination.

As the two tried out different outfits in peace (or rather, Sengoku tried out different outfits while Ryoma smirked), enemies arrived.

"Freeze! Hands up! Give us the clothes and we'll let you leave alive," someone yelled from the bushes. Though neither Ryoma nor Sengoku could see with the dim moonlight what their enemy, or enemies had as weapons, both immediately did as they were told.

Sengoku half-turned to Ryoma, confused why this boy with an apparently good weapon was surrendering. "Why don't you just shoot him with your bazooka?"

"Don't know how to use it. The booklet's in French," Ryoma explained to Sengoku under his breath. "What about you? What's your weapon?"

"It flew away," Sengoku replied, looking romantic.

Ryoma sweatdropped, too surprised to even bother to keep his voice down. "Flew away? Is your weapon an airplane or what?"

"It's a pigeon. I named her Lucky," Sengoku told Ryoma.

While Ryoma and Sengoku were discussing their lame weapons, the enemy seemed to make sure that they weren't going to fight back any time soon and approached them slowly and carefully. Because people from different schools were naturally not so familiar with each other and, with everyone naked, it was impossible to guess someone's identity from tennis uniforms, it took Ryoma and Sengoku some time to figure out just who the newcomers were. There were three of them, all looking decidedly serious.

"Ah, it's the guys from Fudoumine," Sengoku exclaimed. Indeed, the trio consisted of Tachibana Kippei, holding what looked like a revolver, and Ibu Shinji and Kamio Akira, who were both faithfully following Tachibana in his wake.

"Oh, it's Echizen from Seigaku and… you are?" Tachibana queried. Sengoku was currently in a Hyoutei shirt and Rokkaku jeans, which made it very difficult to determine who he was.

"Sengoku from Yamabuki, lucky!" Sengoku answered.

"Then why are you wearing a Hyoutei shir—Hey! What are you doing with my jacket?" Kamio shouted, seeing that Sengoku had a black jacket in one hand.

"How can you tell it's yours?" Sengoku asked in surprise. It was very dark, after all, and to Sengoku all Fudoumine jackets looked just about the same.

"I wrote 'in the rhythm' on it with whiteout. Of course I can tell," Kamio explained disdainfully and snatched his jacket back. "Don't you ever dare touch my jacket again, pervert."

"But I've always wanted a black jacket so much," Sengoku whimpered, looking pitiful.

"You can have mine. It's okay, I don't need it," kind-hearted Tachibana assured him.

"Oooh! Thanks! I'm so lucky," Sengoku cried and put on Tachibana's black Fudoumine jacket.

Meanwhile, the two long-time enemies, Ibu Shinji and Echizen Ryoma were having a glare-at-each-other contest between themselves. Ryoma, on seeing Shinji, picked up his bazooka and pointed it at his head, just to show Shinji that he had a better-looking weapon than his.

His desired effect was achieved. Shinji gaped at the bazooka in awe and started mumbling under his breath. "Wow, you have a bazooka. That's really an excellent weapon, that bazooka. You know, the three of us were discussing our weapons and all of our weapons were pretty much useless, and so Tachibana-buchou said that it couldn't be a coincidence and that it might be that everyone's weapon was just as useless as ours, and so we decided to look around and see if everyone had useless weapons as well so we could make sure that we were right, but now I see we must be wrong, because you have a bazooka. Look, Tachibana-buchou, he's got a bazooka. What should we do? It seems that we must be very unlucky because all three of us have useless weapons. Are we going to die, buchou? Look, buchou, his bazooka is so big and—"

"Shinji! You should have kept that a secret! Fudoumine is not going to win this way now everyone knows that we have terrible weapons," Kamio screeched and put his head in his hands.

"Ah sorry, it sort of slipped out by accident. You know, there were many other times that I accidentally said something I shouldn't have, like that time when Tachibana-buchou's little sister was sleeping and Kamio-kun—"

"Eh? You don't have a good weapon? Then what's that you're holding?" Sengoku asked Tachibana, eyeing the revolver-shaped item in his hand.

"Well actually it's a banana," Tachibana admitted embarrassedly. "We call it Tachi-banana."

"—Kissed her face, and I saw him do it, and I promised Kamio-kun to keep it a secret, but the next day by accident I—"

"I was really shocked when I realized that my weapon was a banana, so I—_What?_ Kamio kissed An, you said?" Tachibana gasped and turned to Kamio in full anger.

"I didn't really mean—aw, buchou, really, I'm sorry," Kamio stuttered, sending Shinji death glares as he tried to back away from the fuming Tachibana. Shinji, who caused all the trouble, ignored him and was already chatting happily with Sengoku as if he had nothing to do with Tachibana's and Kamio's fight.

"So you guys all got useless weapons too? I got a pigeon. She already flew away," Sengoku said to Shinji, relaxing once he knew that the Fudoumine people could not do him any harm.

"Yeah. Mine's a box of cough drops. It's good because if I get thirsty when I ramble on I have something to eat, but still, compared with Echizen's bazooka, mine is just plain lame." Shinji sighed.

"He can't use it anyway. He doesn't understand the instruction booklet because it's in French. If he knew how to use that bazooka, do you think we would still be alive?" Sengoku shrugged.

"You don't have to tell him that," Ryoma yelled from aside.

"Oh, so he can't use it either. That way, Tachibana-buchou was right—we all have horrible weapons. Kamio-kun got a set of earphones. We were really jealous of him because we thought he could spend the rest of his life listening to his favorite music, but then he pointed out that it's pointless to have earphones if he doesn't have an MP3 or iPod, and he was right. Well, of course, we can strangle people with the earphones, but it will be so hard because we'll have to sneak upon our victim from his back, and that is quite difficult. So does that mean that everyone's got useless weapons? Should we go look for other people so we can make sure?" Shinji mumbled and mumbled and finally came to a stop. He looked expectantly up at Tachibana, waiting for him to answer his question.

"We can't be completely sure though. We might just be the unlucky few who have the worst weapons, and we can't take risks in such a situation," Tachibana, having finished scolding Kamio, pointed out. "I know that Sanada from RikkaiDai has a samurai sword, and that alone is already a better weapon than all of ours put together. We have an advantage though—there are five of us. We can form an alliance called 'Shitty Weapons are Awesome Team' (SWAT) or something. It will be hard for anyone to beat all five of us if we unite."

The others considered what Tachibana, who loved uniting people and team pep talks, said and found this agreeable. After all, to protect themselves they needed strong weapons, so they might as well work together to rob other people of their weapons. One could always betray the team after he attained a good weapon anyway.

"So SWAT it is. Where should we go if we want to rob other people's weapons?" Sengoku exclaimed brightly.

"I think we should just stay here. People will come on their own accord because they want to get dressed. We can bargain with them with these clothes, and maybe we can get some good weapons even without using violence and robbery," Tachibana suggested. "Also, the others do not know that Echizen cannot use his bazooka. We can scare them into handing us their weapons if it's necessary."

"Good idea, buchou," both Shinji and Kamio cried out enthusiastically. Being Tachibana-worshippers they would probably cry out "good idea, buchou" even if Tachibana had suggested that they all jump off a cliff, but in this case Tachibana's words did make sense, so Ryoma and Sengoku also agreed.

Therefore, the five sat down on the ground to wait for their future victims to appear, Ryoma holding his bazooka, Sengoku holding the box of clothes, and Tachibana pretending that his banana was a revolver.

SWAT was formed.

**Hour 2**

**40 contestants remaining**

TBC. Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome.

To loove it!!: Thanks for the review:) Yeah, I update every Friday because it's the only time I can reach a computer that allows me to use the enter key on ffnet... (Am I the only one who has this ffnet-enter key problem?)

To saya: Thanks for the review!:D I know, they are too handsome to die:D

* * *


	8. Chapter 8

Tachibana Kippei was almost always right. Not long after SWAT was formed, a group of (naked, of course) contestants approached the hill from the woods with the intention of finding something decent to wear. Seeing shadows move among the trees, the five current members of SWAT cautiously put their best "we're strong, we have a bazooka, do not mess with us" look on their faces, and got into fake fighting positions. They were fake fighting positions because they were not really planning to fight, and were actually ready to run away as fast as they could as soon as the enemy showed any signs of hostility. The enemies from the woods glared back at SWAT, but none of them made a move either, probably intimidated by the sight of the bazooka.

"This is not good. They have a bazooka, and my samurai sword is no match to a bazooka. They can blow me to pieces before I ever get close enough to use my sword on them," Sanada muttered, looking troubled as he played with the shiny samurai sword in his hands. Yukimura was by his side (as expected since Sanada was Yukimura's weapon), as well as several other Rikkai Dai people they picked up on the way.

"But fukubuchou, I really want to get dressed," Kirihara whined. He was the only second-year in the crowd _and_ he was naked, so it was understandable that he wanted something to wear desperately.

Yukimura smiled a motherly smile. "Don't worry, Akaya, I'm sure we'll find a way. What's your weapon?"

"I got eyewash." Kirihara sighed, showing his captain his weapon.

"I see." Yukimura nodded and turned to Yagyuu, who was standing around looking bored. "What about you?"

"Mascara," Yagyuu replied.

"Very well. Even though there are only five of us, our weapons are good enough for us to launch an attack," Yukimura announced. "Here's my plan. Since it seems that there are five of them as well, we will do it one-on-one. On the count of three, Genichiro, you must attack the one that has the gun with your weapon: the samurai sword. Akaya, you should attack the one on the left with your weapon: eyewash. Hiroshi, you must blind the one on the right with your weapon: mascara, and I will attack the one in the middle with my weapon: Genichiro. Isn't this a good plan? This is sure to work."

"Wow, buchou, you are so smart," Kirihara exclaimed in admiration, completely not getting the fact that this plan was just absurd all over.

Sanada, who had sense, coughed from aside. "Seiichi, we can't do it this way. The four of us will be blasted to the ground by Echizen's bazooka before we get into combat range."

"You worry too much, Genichiro. You see, that kid Echizen will not fire at us."

"How come?"

"Well, remember? We do have a fifth and final person."

--

SWAT was not really expecting the five figures in the forest to attack them. Though they did not say it out loud, they were pretty sure that the presence of a bazooka ought to stop the enemy from coming any closer, so they were fairly surprised when the five figures actually did come charging towards them. Luckily, Ryoma quickly recovered his senses and recited the line that Tachibana had told him to say.

"Freeze, or we'll fire!"

"Echizen, put down your bazooka. Two hundred laps around the woods, now."

Ryoma stared in shock. "Yes…yes, buchou!" Then he put down his bazooka and went to do his two hundred laps around the woods.

"Tezuka? Why are you hanging around with all these Rikkai people? I never knew you were such good friends with them," Tachibana remarked skeptically, his banana slipping from his grip in his confusion as he watched four Rikkai people and one Tezuka happily rummage through Sengoku's box of clothes.

"Being a trickster has its advantages." Tezuka, who was really Niou pretending to be Tezuka, smirked as he finally found his own jersey. He also picked up some other people's clothes just in case he needed to dress up as someone else.

"It's pretty nice to be able to impersonate. I wish I could," Yukimura murmured blissfully to Sanada, who looked horrified at the idea.

"Wait, so all you guys want are clothes? You're not planning to kill us?" Kamio finally spoke up, seeing that the Rikkai people did not show any intention of doing any bodily harm even though the Rikkai people obviously knew now that they didn't really have any good weapons to speak of.

"I can't kill you with eyewash." Kirihara sighed deeply, exhibiting his eyewash.

"I can't kill you with an eyeliner." Niou sighed deeply, exhibiting his eyeliner.

"I can't kill you with a samurai sword—wait, I _can_." Sanada suddenly realized that his was the most reasonable weapon he had encountered so far, but as soon as he raised his sword to start killing he had trouble deciding who to start with and finally put it back into its sheath.

Tachibana, seeing this, came to the conclusion that this whole program was utterly ridiculous. The weapons were ridiculous. The cameras might be bogus. Heck, perhaps the "exploding" collars were also faked. It could be just a huge stupid game show.

"The only way to make sure is to try for myself," Tachibana declared, and pulled Shinji's collar over to investigate. Since Shinji's collar was, again, connected to Shinji, he was dragged along, mumbling, as well.

"Listen," Tachibana told everyone who was around, "I believe that this collar might be useless. The buttons on it very likely have no function whatsoever. To prove this, I will have to try pressing the _explode_ button to see what happens."

"Wait." Shinji raised a hand to complain. "What if it _does_ work? I don't want my collar to explode. How about trying it on someone else?"

"That's true," Kamio agreed. "I think I might as well try this button that says '_press me and I'll eat your hand_'." He then pressed it and immediatey his entire right hand was swallowed by Shinji's collar, which opened up suddenly and clamped back shut without warning. Kamio started screaming like a madman, deciding that he did not need to keep his voice down if nobody had harmful weapons and he did not have to hide from anyone anyway. Besides, it hurt a lot.

"Ahhh it hurts! Aw dammit—which idiot was it that said the collars were useless? See? It's in perfect working condition! Oops, was it you, buchou? Sorry for calling you an idiot, I mean I'm really sorry but it hurts and aw I'm so sorry—"

"Luckily I didn't press anything." Tachibana, meanwhile, was secretly feeling glad. Though he did not like his team members to suffer, he was of course happy that he was not the one suffering. Humans are like that.

"Luckily you didn't press the _explode_ button," Shinji muttered. "I don't like the notion of my neck breaking into pieces. But still, Kamio-kun, now that your hand is caught in my collar, I'll have to drag you wherever I go, even when I need to piss. I think that this is very troublesome and I wish you hadn't pressed the—"

"You think I actually like it anymore than you do?" Kamio hollered in fury.

"Ah, what an interesting school, this Fudoumine," the Rikkai people remarked as they sat around fanning themselves and watching the fiasco.

"Well, anyway, here's the conclusion." Tachibana stood up and said (because he realized that if he did not make some conclusion, no one else was going to do so). "We have horrible weapons, but our collars work. This means that the hosts of the program wish that we will find ways to kill each other _without _using weapons."

--

"Correct. As expected from Tachibana Kippei." Coach Ryuuzaki nodded approvingly as she watched Tachibana deliver his speech on a monitor screen. "We don't have enough money to buy good weapons, so you'd better make other plans. Don't blame us if you all die in three days."

Everyone would have felt like throwing stuff at Coach Ryuuzaki if they had heard this (not that they hadn't already wanted to), but because Ryuuzaki had been talking to herself in her small room at the base, of course no one heard her.

--

"But how are we going to kill anyone without weapons?" Kirihara wondered.

"There are many ways, Akaya," Yukimura explained, smiling. "You can strangle someone with your hands, press the _explode_ button on someone's collar, kick someone off a cliff, kick someone who can't swim into a lake, beat up someone until he dies, set fire on someone or throw rocks at someone's head. There are so many ways that I can't begin to count them."

"Wow, buchou, you are so clever," Kirihara said admiringly. He hoped to become as great as his Yukimura-buchou when he grew up.

"These ways are very troublesome though," Shinji muttered. "If we had weapons it would be much simpler."

"You got a problem with that? Try making money yourself, you brat!" Coach Ryuuzaki yelled and slammed her fist on the table. Shinji did not hear her though because, as stated above, she was in her small room at the base.

"I believe that it will take too much time and trouble making plans to kill others with such a lack of weapons," Tezuka spoke up. He had just arrived on the spot with Davide from Rokkaku, whom he had met on the way, and was ready to assume leadership over this newfound group because he was always ready to be leader. "It will be more simple and efficient if we all unite and find a way to get off the island together."

"Shut up, you fake buchou," Ryoma snapped, having just returned from doing his two hundred laps around the woods. Then he realized that it was really Tezuka who had spoken and not Niou, but Tezuka already walked away, feeling hurt, before Ryoma could apologize. Davide tried to make a pun about this but could not think of one however he tried, so he remained silent (to everyone's relief).

"Tezuka is right. I believe that as long as we unite, there must be some way for us to escape unscathed," Tachibana declared, always willing to support other people and state his beliefs on how beautiful humanity really was.

"Yeah, Tezuka is right. YAY for Tezuka!" Niou and Yagyuu, who were both dressed up as Tezuka (they took out two Seigaku jerseys from the box of garments), applauded loudly.

"Will someone please help me get my hand out?" Kamio sobbed.

"Can you guys stop making everything more confusing than it already is?" Ryoma cried in frustration.

Ryoma was right. There were so many people in this crowd that it had become too chaotic to comprehend. Therefore, let us take a look at those people who were not at the hill and had no plans of coming forward either.

**Hour 2**

**40 contestants remaining**

* * *

TBC. Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome.

To loove it!!: Thanks for the review:D I love the Tezooka idea.


	9. Chapter 9

"Akutsu-senpai!"

Startled by this sudden exclamation, the tall, silver-haired youth who had been walking alone in the moonlight turned abruptly and scowled.

"Idiot, what do you want?" He glared menacingly at Dan Taiichi, but slowed down enough to let the smaller boy catch up with him.

"I'm sorry, senpai, I—" Dan panted, doing his best to keep up with his extraordinarily tall senpai. His big eyes were full of worry, probably because he did not want his senpai to be angry with him.

"It's not safe. Others will hear you if you yell like that," Akutsu said coldly, without looking at Dan at all.

"Oh." Dan nodded, half-walking, half-jogging by his senpai. He wished his legs were longer. "Senpai, what's your weapon?"

"My weapon?" Akutsu repeated, and burst out laughing, completely disregarding his previous comment about not attracting attention. _He's crazy! Akutsu-senpai's gone crazy,_ Dan thought, staring in amazement.

"Senpai," he began slowly and timidly, deciding that if Akutsu wouldn't talk he might as well reveal his weapon first, "if you don't trust me, I'll let you see mine."

"Fine." Akutsu stopped walking. "Show me."

So Dan showed him. "Look, it's a pitcher. I can water flowers with it."

Akutsu examined the pitcher, and began laughing like a madman again.

Dan could only stare in confusion. "Uh… senpai?"

"Look at mine," Akutsu stopped laughing and sighed deeply, drawing out a small packet from his backpack and putting it into Dan's tiny hands.

"Is this—" Dan whispered, feeling the small packet carefully.

"Yes. It's a bag of lettuce seeds."

Dan now realized why Akutsu had been laughing like a maniac. Anyone would have laughed like a maniac if he got a bag of lettuce seeds as a weapon in a Battle Royale.

For a few moments neither knew what to say, but they were both thinking the exact same thing.

At last, Akutsu broke the silence. "So, since you have a pitcher and I have lettuce seeds—"

"—Let's plant the seeds and grow lettuce," Dan finished for Akutsu before he could remember that finishing sentences for Akutsu was not a safe thing to do.

"Yeah." Akutsu smiled softly, though he would rather die or eat sixteen spiders than admit that he had ever smiled like this. "Let's plant the seeds and grow lettuce."

--

"Your name starts with an F, does it?" Kurobane Harukaze from Rokkaku began, trying to initiate conversation with the boy who was sitting beside him in the grass, who had a scar on his forehead. They did not know each other, but were sitting together anyway because they met not long after the game had started. Bane, thinking that since he was naked he might as well go swimming, was playing around in a pond when a crocodile attacked him. The boy with a scar came along and saved him, and after that they teamed up and moved about together. Bane had been a bit unsure as to whether he should trust someone with a scar on his forehead (could be a bandit of some sort, who knows?) but since that 'someone' had saved his life he decided that it must be okay.

"Well, does yours start with K?" Fuji Yuuta, the boy with a scar on his forehead, asked.

"Yeah. I'm Kurobane."

"I'm Fuji."

"Ah, so that's why." They both nodded understandingly, looking at the weapons in the other's hands.

Bane had a giant K-shaped plastic sign, and Yuuta had a giant F-shaped plastic sign. Yuuta, being resourceful (he had to be, living in such an abnormal family), had soon realized that an F-shaped plastic sign was useless and found a rock to sharpen the end of the "F" on. With one end sharpened, the sign became a reasonably handy weapon. In fact, it was what Yuuta had used to chase off the crocodile and save Bane. Bane, meanwhile, was not that resourceful. The only use he could think of to use his K-shaped sign was to turn it sideways, stick it in the ground and jump over it, which he did happily.

"Well then—" they both started, looking at each other, brows furrowed. "Whose name starts with C then?"

That's right. If there was an F and a K, there must obviously be a C also. That way, they could make a large KFC sign.

"But I don't know anyone whose last name starts with C," Bane muttered, counting with his fingers, "at least not in our school."

"Neither do I. At least not in our school," Yuuta agreed, twirling his F-shaped sign like it was a tennis racket.

"Weird. If we can find the person with a C sign and fit the signs together to make KFC, maybe we can get a wish or something," Bane pondered.

"Yeah. It will be great if we can make a wish." Yuuta nodded dreamily.

"What will you wish for if we really find the C-person and really get to make a wish?" Bane asked curiously, completely forgetting that any normal person would wish to leave this game alive and unscathed.

Yuuta mulled it over and finally admitted embarrassedly, "I've always wanted those new Yu-Gi-Oh GX cards."

"Really? I've always wanted those too."

Discovering that they had common interests, the two immediately launched into an animated conversation about Yu-Gi-Oh GX, completely forgetting that, again, any normal person would wish to leave this game alive and unscathed and wishing for Yu-Gi-Oh GX cards was just plain stupid.

"Maybe we should just wait, you know. If we are lucky enough, the person with the C sign will stumble into us some time."

"Yeah. Hey, though the chances of us getting home alive is pretty little, if we _do_ get home alive—"

"Yes?"

"—I'll send you the Yu-Gi-Oh GX opening song via IM. I've looked _everywhere_ and finally found a place to download it."

"Oh really? That's great. I've wanted that song for_ever_."

So they went on discussing Yu-Gi-Oh GX. Since I know next to nothing about Yu-Gi-Oh GX, we might as well move onto someone else and see if any other new friendships are being forged.

**Hour2**

**40 contestants remaining.**

* * *

TBC. Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome.

To saya: Thanks for the review xD I understand, I think Yukimura's got the best weapon too.

To loove it!!: Thanks for the review xD I figured that Ryuuzaki might not be very rich…

To kalista jia: Thanks for the review xD I am starting to think that YukiSana will end up to be the only pairing in this fic. Besides AkuDan… I wish I were more skilled at writing pairings…


	10. Chapter 10

Mukahi Gakuto was curled up under a large tree, alone, feeling extremely cold. He had nothing to wear, and did not intend to go to the hill to look for clothes because he a) had no alliances, not having run into anyone at all, b) did not know where the hill was and c) had the complete series of Doraemon as his weapon. He had no fighting chance against anyone, not with _comic books_. He had survived so far by keeping a low profile and staying out-of-sight, but he had the feeling that as soon as he did get seen, he would be killed.

He wanted to cry, not only because he was cold and had no proper weapon, but also because he, as the last member of Hyoutei to leave the classroom, had been so sure that some of his teammates would stay around to wait for him.

No one stayed to wait for him.

There he had been in the classroom waiting for his turn, stuck among a group of unfamiliar Rikkai people, feeling abandoned. The more he thought about it, the more he hated his teammates for not waiting for him. He hated being alone. He was the kind of person who wanted someone to be with him _anytime_. He sniffled, feeling the urgent need of tissues. Being naked, he of course didn't have any of those on him. Not that he ever carried tissues with him anyway, that was for people like Choutaro.

"Getting involved in a Battle Royale is bad enough, but catching a cold in a Battle Royale is even worse," Gakuto murmured to himself as he sneezed. Having no one to talk to, he could only read his Doraemon manga, and had already came to the tenth volume. He still had a long way to go though.

"Do you need some tissues, nfu?"

Gakuto was so surprised to hear an unfamiliar voice right behind him that he literally jumped over the tree (he was very bouncy, after all). Though there wasn't anything wrong with the comic book he was reading, he quickly hid it behind his back like it was a Playboy magazine nevertheless. He looked up to see Mizuki Hajime from St. Rudolph grinning at him from behind the tree. Mizuki was holding out tissues, waiting for him to accept. A quick scrutiny told him that Mizuki did not have any dangerous weapons.

_He looks dangerous. Would he really be that nice to lend me tissues? He could have poisoned them or something._ Gakuto frowned indecisively as his thoughts whizzed about in his head like bees. _But surely it would be too impolite if I don't accept…_

"Thanks," Gakuto said as he finally took the tissues from Mizuki. Though he did not trust Mizuki (he found it very hard to trust anyone now, and he knew that Mizuki was less trustworthy than the average "anyone"), he decided to accept them anyway because he really needed the tissues, as his nose was becoming quite runny. After all, who knows? Mizuki might be a nice person really.

"Let me see… these cost two hundred dollars," Mizuki stated.

Gakuto decided that Mizuki was definitely not a nice person and he would never trust the likes of him ever again. "I'm naked. How can I have any money with me? And anyway, money won't help you here."

"You can't use them if you don't pay," Mizuki asserted, wanting to snatch the tissues back, but decided not to because Gakuto had already blown his nose with them.

The two then took a good look at each other. Being both naked, it was easy to see that anything that was not attached to the body must be the weapon. Therefore they soon saw that neither had anything dangerous and let down their guards temporarily. It was simply impossible to kill anyone with tissues or comic books, after all. Gakuto decided that he did not want anything to do with Mizuki, so he ignored him and went back to his reading, hoping that Mizuki would just go away. Mizuki, however, would not stop pestering him.

"Hey, talk to me. Stop reading those comic books, nfu," Mizuki began, kicking Gakuto from one side.

"If you're bored, you're welcome to read one of these. I've got so many." Gakuto shrugged. Chatting with Mizuki was not an option. He wished Mizuki would go away. Even without a weapon Mizuki didn't feel like someone he should hang around with.

"I don't like comic books," Mizuki declined disdainfully and insisted on kicking Gakuto and making conversation. "Hey, have you met any of your teammates here yet?"

To Gakuto, this was a touchy subject. Tears threatened to well over his big eyes, but he would not let Mizuki see them and held back as well as he could. "No," he finally managed to say. "They're so heartless. If _I_ got out earlier, I would definitely hang around to wait for them."

"It's okay for you to stay and wait because you are small and have less possibility of being seen. Your teammates are bigger, so they might have had trouble finding somewhere to hide," Mizuki pointed out, not because he wanted to console Gakuto or anything but simply because he wanted to rub in that Gakuto was short. Gakuto seemed to find comfort in this though, and brightened up visibly.

"What about _your_ teammates?"

"Don't know. There aren't many of us in the first place anyway." Mizuki shook his head. "Have you seen anyone else then?"

"No. You're the first I've seen since—" Gakuto was saying when he was interrupted by sudden blaring music. It was a song by the famous Japanese band X-Japan.

Gakuto and Mizuki looked at each other in confusion for a moment, wondering where it came from. Surely the hosts of the program wouldn't be sadistic enough to actually play music over the loud speakers?

"Ah," Gakuto exclaimed, snapping his fingers. "It's my cell phone. I changed the dial tone last week, so I completely forgot—"

"Wait," Mizuki broke in, raising an eyebrow questioningly. "You're naked. Where do you keep your cell phone?"

"Well," Gakuto explained innocently, "don't you think my hair looks nothing like normal Japanese hair? I blame it on my private hairdresser." He let down his red hair, which was actually a wig, and revealed normal black hair and a cute little red cell phone.

Mizuki's jaw dropped to the ground. Though as a lover of beautiful things Mizuki was envious that rich Gakuto had a private hairdresser, he was sensible enough to realize that he would much rather do his hair himself than have a hairdresser with such horrible styling sense.

Meanwhile, Gakuto was ecstatically screaming away on his cute little red cell phone. "Hello? YUUSHI! I miss you guys _so much_. Uh…huh? Really? Okay. Wait for me. I'll be there right away. BYEEEE!"

"Hey, keep it down. People will know we're here," Mizuki whispered, motioning Gakuto to be quiet. "If they know we're here, with our weapons we are as good as dead."

"It's all right." Gakuto hanged up with a big grin. "Yuushi said that he ran into a group of people who all have terrible weapons. They think that nobody has received good weapons, but the collar still works, so they say that it will be better to get everyone together and find a way out of this. I'm meeting with them. Are you coming? Yuushi says the more heads the better."

"Of course I'm not going with you. You shouldn't trust your teammates that easily, you know." Mizuki frowned. "It can be a trap for all I know. And anyway, why does _Oshitari_ have a cell phone too?"

"Well, people don't usually have blue hair, you know… Yuushi's hair is also a wig," Gakuto explained, looking more embarrassed by the moment.

"What? Do you have the same hairdresser or something?" Mizuki had always had pride on his data-collecting abilities, but he now realized that there were still many things he didn't know.

"It's not actually like that," Gakuto told him, lowering his voice. "This is a secret, so don't tell anyone else, okay? You see, our buchou is losing hair, but he doesn't want the other students to know about it, so he wears a wig. Then he got sick of being the only one who wears a wig and ordered everyone on the tennis team to wear one too so he wouldn't feel lonely."

Mizuki's jaw dropped to the floor again. He had just heard probably the biggest secret on this entire island, and yet he had no notebook to write in. He felt devastated. Gakuto lent Mizuki his cell phone so that Mizuki could send a message to his own cell phone to remind himself of this important piece of information, but it seemed that the cell phone could not reach anyone outside of the island (After all, if it could, Gakuto could have called his parents for help). While he was attempting to make it work and failing miserably, Gakuto noted a large eagle flying past their heads and was staring at it with fascination.

"We must be at somewhere outside Japan," Gakuto remarked to Mizuki, who was still frustrated over the cell phone.

"I'm hungry," Mizuki commented as he gave up working on the cell phone and watched the eagle swirl around them. It looked so big and fleshy. "What do you think an eagle tastes like?"

"Don't know. Might as well try cook it." Gakuto picked up one of his hundreds of comic books and aimed it at the eagle. The comic book got stuck in a tree after hitting the eagle, while the eagle promptly fell to the ground.

The two then looked at each other again, because they had come to the sudden realization that after doing a lot of meaningless things, like killing eagles, together, they really had no reason to stay here hanging out with each other anymore now that Gakuto had received a summoning from his teammate. The time for them to part ways had come.

They have not really spoken to each other before, but for some strange reason a bond was formed in the past few minutes. It could be because they had seen each other naked and therefore had nothing to hide. Or it could be because in such a place while it was easy for friends to turn into enemies, it was also easy for the "whatever" people to turn into friends. _Or_ it could be neither of these, but only because Mizuki had learned about the top secrets of Hyoutei from Gakuto. Well, yeah, it _was_ only because Mizuki had learned about the top secrets of Hyoutei from Gakuto.

"Since Yuushi's met a group of people, they can all help us cook this," Gakuto suggested, trying his best to make an invitation that didn't seem too awkward. "So are you coming with me or not? You may never get another chance to taste an eagle, you know."

Mizuki raised an eyebrow. "Of course I'm coming with you, nfu."

**Hour 3 **

**40 contestants remaining.**

* * *

TBC. Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome.

To loove it!!: Yeah, that yakiniku episode was hilarious xD KFC means Kentucky Fried Chicken. It's the place where my friend and I always hang out and plan who to kill next. We figured we should give that place some credit:D

To Crazy Rabid Bunnies: I can't log in too sometimes. I wonder why? I've never tried the biscuits there though...

To s-a-w: Thanks for the review:D I don't eat there much either. Usually we just sit around and order nothing. The people behind the counter must hate us.


	11. Chapter 11

"Hmm. Now that we know for sure that the weapons are useless but the collars can still explode, there's really nothing left to do except to find more people and figure out a way to get out of here alive," Oshitari reasoned in his usual sexy voice as he sat in a tree with some people from various other schools he had met on the way.

"True." Oishi nodded. "But how do we find more people? This is quite a big island, and we have no means to get in contact with anyone except Hyoutei people."

"Well, I don't actually have the cell phone numbers of _everyone_ in Hyoutei," Oshitari told him, counting on his fingers, "but Atobe said over the phone that Kabaji and Jiroh were with him, so I don't need to call those two anyway. Gakuto is also on the way, so though I can't find Shishido or Ootori because it seems that their cell phones are turned off, at least four will be coming to meet with us soon. Hmm… wait, Atobe, Gakuto, Shishido, Ootori, Kabaji, Jiroh, and me—that makes seven. But I remember that we have eight people. Who did I skip?"

Yanagi Renji, the data master, looked thoughtful for a moment. "Are you sure you have eight people? However I count all I can remember are seven."

"If the data master says so, there probably _are_ only seven. You must have miscounted, Oshitari." Saeki Kojiro from Rokkaku stretched himself lazily.

"But I still think there are eight from Hyoutei," Oshitari muttered in his sexy deep voice as he played with a strand of his sexy blue hair.

"Data do not lie," Renji stated, and began to push up his glasses like Inui always did when he suddenly realized that he never had glasses and stopped mid-action.

"Okay, it's seven then," Oshitari decided agreeably. "Now that I have called everyone I can find in Hyoutei, how are you people going to find the others from _your_ schools? The more people we have on our side the better."

"The chance of Sanada and Yukimura being together is 100 percent. There is also a 68 percent chance that the others are with them, so as long as I can get in touch with Yukimura, finding everyone else in Rikkai will not be a problem," Renji calculated.

"So how are you going to contact Yukimura then? I'm sure you Rikkai people don't have cell phones hidden under your wigs," Kisarazu Atsushi, who had been sitting around idly, finally spoke up. "Well, at least I'm sure that that Jackal person couldn't have."

"Good question, Ryou," Renji agreed. Having neither notebook nor pen, he bit his finger until the blood came and scribbled notes on the tree.

"I'm Kisarazu Atsushi. Is it _that_ hard to distinguish between me and my brother?" Atsushi murmured sadly.

"See, since you are not in your uniform—" Oishi explained.

"Our hairstyles are different," Atsushi pointed out. "I cut my hair _because_ I want to look different from my brother."

"What's the difference?" Saeki piped up confusedly. "You're Ryou, aren't you?"

"I'm Atsushi! Aren't you Ryou's teammate? Why can't even _you_ tell us apart?" Atsushi felt like crying.

"We don't know what the difference is either," all the other people present said in unison.

Atsushi then proceeded to find a corner to silently sob in, but seeing that there were not any "corners" near the tree he gave up.

Renji, disregarding the crying Atsushi, turned to Oishi. "How are _you_ going to contact the rest of the Seigaku people?"

"I'm not really sure. See, I don't know where any of them are, and they probably won't be hanging around together like you Rikkai people, so it will be more difficult to find them in a single try."

"I see. Saeki, do you have any idea where the other Rokkaku people are?"

"I'm not sure. Besides Ryou and myself—"

"I'm not Ryou!" Atsushi screamed.

"So how about the other St. Rudolph people then?" Oshitari kindly asked Atsushi.

"How would I know? There aren't many of us to begin with—hey, that's Mizuki."

And Mizuki it was. He was holding a giant eagle in one hand. Behind him came Mukahi Gakuto, who was carrying a heavy load of comic books but still bouncy, probably because the prospect of seeing Oshitari excited him too much.

"Mizuki! Finally, someone from St. Rudolph!" Atsushi exclaimed and hopped down from the tree to welcome Mizuki. He was not that friendly with Mizuki but after hanging around with strange people from other schools he was ready to welcome any familiar face.

"Hi. Aren't you—uh—Kisarazu Ryou from Rokkaku?" Mizuki exclaimed in surprise at the warm greeting.

"I hate you." Atsushi went off to sulk by himself.

Meanwhile, the Dirty Pair were happily having a reunion.

"Yuushi!" They embraced in a mighty bear hug.

"Gakuto!" Their tender affection for each other made the others blush.

"Yuushi!" They embraced again.

"Gakuto!" And yet again.

"Yuushi, I've got more than a hundred comic books for my weapon! Look!"

"Ah, Gakuto! I've got this glass wipe for my weapon. I can use it to wipe my glasses. But the hosts of the program took my glasses away, so I can't do anything with it."

"Don't worry, Yuushi, you still look wonderful without glasses."

"Ah, Gakuto!"

"Ah, Yuushi!"

The others felt almost envious as they watched Gakuto nuzzle Oshitari like a cat. They wished that they had at least one teammate with them too, but they did not have wigs or cell phones hidden under them after all, and so it was impossible for them to phone their teammates.

"You needn't look like that," Mizuki, who had managed to find a teammate as well, told the forlorn-looking Oishi and Saeki. "You can just yell for your teammates a bit, and if they hear you they'll sure come over."

"But this is a large island." Oishi sighed, feeling more forsaken than ever watching the two doubles partners chatting away. After leaving Ryoma, he had not run into anyone else from Seigaku. He was wandering in the woods when he met the people who were presently sitting in the tree with him. They were all from different schools and very wary, and would have waged war had their weapons been any better. As it was, all their weapons sucked, so they quickly came to a truce and came to the same conclusion that Tachibana Kippei did: the whole program must have been a joke. However, when Saeki tested his collar by pressing a button that said _lumos_, neon lights in seventeen different colors illuminated the place. Thus, they yet again came to the same conclusion that Tachibana Kippei did: the weapons were lousy, yet the collars were for real, and that they would have to unite to find a way out of this. That was why they were sitting in the tree discussing how to find everybody in the first place.

"You see," Renji was saying, "the others who have not run into many people, like us, may not know that everyone has horrible weapons and may not dare to come out naked. This increases the difficulty of finding everyone."

Mizuki had to agree (Everyone _had_ to agree with Yanagi Renji). "So what should we do, nfu?"

"Some other people might still come along," Oshitari suggested from aside. "When I called Gakuto I did not expect that he would bring you along, but here you are. Therefore, on Atobe's way here, he may very well pick up some other people as well. That way, we can have quite a lot of heads to put together."

"If only Sadaharu would come," Renji muttered, fondly reminiscing of the great times he used to have with Inui. "When we were little, we found together many ways to kill beetles without using any weapons. I'm sure if he was here now—"

"Actually, I think Inui _is_ here," Oshitari stated, pointing at a tall figure that was walking towards them.

"Sadaharu!" Renji exclaimed with his eyes closed.

"Sadaharu—I mean, Inui!" Oishi exclaimed with his eyes open. He knew that Inui was dangerous to have around but nevertheless the presence of another Seigaku member comforted him a great lot.

Inui was not the only one who had come. Behind him were Atobe and Kabaji who was carrying a sleeping Jiroh. As Oshitari had predicted, Atobe _had_ picked up some people from various schools on the way. Besides Inui, Horio from Seigaku, Jackal from Rikkai and Aoi from Rokkaku also arrived with them.

"We have fourteen people now," Oishi observed.

"Two teams! We can play tennis," Aoi cried out ecstatically.

"Cool. I'll play doubles with Yuushi," Gakuto declared.

"Ore-sama will play singles one," Atobe announced.

"Why you? I want to play singles one too," Mizuki complained.

"We can be on different teams." Atobe shrugged. "Where do you want to play, Jiroh?"

"Wherever," Jiroh replied in his sleep. He was the only one who dared to speak to Atobe like this.

"This is not a time to play tennis," Oishi put in. "Weren't we supposed to find a way out here?"

"We don't have rackets," Inui pointed out.

"What a pity." Saeki sighed wistfully.

"It won't be fair anyway. There are so many Hyoutei people here—five, I think," Atsushi counted.

Gakuto nodded. "Yeah, we are all here except Shishido and Ootori. But Yuushi, don't we have eight people?"

"That's what I thought, but I simply can't remember who the eighth is."

"But I don't think Taki is here—"

"No matter how many people you have, what we should focus on at this point is how to get these collars off," Inui interrupted from aside.

"Maybe we should just think about it ourselves," Renji told Inui, as he watched the Hyoutei people quarrel amongst themselves about just how many of their team members had landed on this island. "They won't be much help anyway."

"—The chance of you saying so is 98.3 percent."

--

Hiyoshi Wakashi, forgotten by the entirety of Hyoutei, was sitting alone beside a small creek.

He had a mosquito incense repellent for a weapon.

"How am I to gekokujou with this?" He muttered.

**Hour 4**

**40 contestants remaining**

To be continued. Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome.

To loove it!!: Oh, neither do I:D But we have a KFC right across where I live:) Thank you so much for the compliment xD

To shourin: xDD That three weeks ago thing was funny. Yeah, you are right about the wig hype, I hadn't really thought of it:D

* * *


	12. Chapter 12

While Inui and Yanagi were happily discussing how to take off their collars with their data that never lie, we might as well take a look at Fuji. Not Yuuta, the older one.

Fuji had found a shabby house to hide in not long after he left the classroom. It was not a big house, and certainly not very extravagantly furnished, but Fuji found it cozy enough to stay in. What made it even better was that there was a Prince of Tennis poster on the wall in the bedroom. Fuji chuckled at the fact that this anime, with him in it, had spread so widely around the world.

Then he quickly realized that something was not right with this poster. It had a picture of all nine Seigaku regulars on it, but the names were all wrong.

"Must be a fake one bought cheap, or maybe a fanart by someone who can't remember the names correctly," he decided. "But these names don't even seem like names—Look Ryoma, Behind Kunimitsu—who in their right mind will have names like 'Look' and 'Behind'? No, wait—"

Fuji, being the genius he was, quickly came to the conclusion that these names were just too weird. It couldn't have been a fake, cheap poster or fanart.

"Look Ryoma, Behind Kunimitsu, This Syusuke, Poster Sadaharu, And Kaoru, Press Syuichiro, The Eiji, Red Takeshi, Button Takashi. So I guess it means I have to look behind this poster and press the red button."

So he did. The person who had occupied this house had perhaps left this clue for contestants in the program before he was evacuated. The hosts of the program probably had not noticed this because they had no interest in looking at Prince of Tennis posters.

As soon as Fuji pressed the red button, a wall behind him slid silently open, revealing a secret passage. He was very happy. His weapon was no better than the others', and if he could find some kind of secret passage that he could take to get out of here safely, it would be quite nice.

But the secret passage did not lead out. It led only to a large room underground. Fuji was not at all disappointed, though, because all four walls of this large room underground were lined with beautiful, shining firearms in different shapes, sizes and colors.

"Hmm, then I'd better help myself." Fuji nodded and started taking down random revolvers, pistols, and magazines to his own liking.

The others were in for big trouble.

--

While Fuji, resident genius of Seigaku, was checking out his awesome collection of guns, Marui Bunta, resident genius of Rikkai Dai, was chewing bubblegum and exploring the house he found, his hands in his pockets. He had pockets because he found some pretty clothes in the master bedroom and put them on, and was now one of the happy few on the island that actually had something to wear.

"Ah, a television," he exclaimed, and sat down to watch _America's Next Top Model_.

"Freeze. Put your hands in the air," came a sudden menacing voice, and Marui felt something icy cold being pressed to his neck. Not having run into anyone in the course of his adventures, he did not know anything about just how shitty everyone else's weapons were, and instinctively believing that the icy cold thing must be either a gun or a knife of some sort, he obliged and put his hands in the air. Watching _America's Next Top Model_ was important, but his life was even more important after all.

"Yay, I get the remote," Momo, whom the voice belonged to, yelled triumphantly and changed the channel to a show about butterflies and fairies living together in fairyland. He tossed down his weapon, revealing it to be a spoon he acquired from the kitchen.

"Hey, no fair. I want to watch _America's Next Top Model_," Marui cried, and they started to wrestle over the remote.

"Hey, guys, breakfast's ready," came Kawamura's cheerful voice from the kitchen. Marui and Momo looked at the clock. It was six in the morning, and indeed time for breakfast, though for these two any time was time for breakfast. They put down the remote and went to the dining room, where a large table was standing. Some others were already gathered around it, enthusiastically devouring the canned food Kawamura had found in a cupboard. A passerby would have thought that this were a normal episode of _A Happy Tenipuri Family_ instead of _Battle Royale_.

"You are all from Seigaku," Marui observed. Beside him was Eiji, and across him Momo and Kaidoh who were fighting over a tin of sardines.

"Well, since I ran into Kaidoh as soon as I left the classroom, and we both had terrible weapons—" Kawamura explained, showing Marui his weapon, a mirror.

"Yeah, and then I ran into them, and then we ran into Eiji-senpai," Momo added, his mouth full of food.

"Ran into me? Stepped on me, more like," Eiji complained.

"It's not our fault that you were sleeping on the ground," Momo pointed out.

"Well, where else could I have slept if not on the ground? On the sky?"

Marui had heard rumors that all Seigaku was stupid. He now realized that they were true, and decided to stay as far away from them as possible to avoid being contaminated. He did not want to lose his genius status.

"Marui, how about your weapon? Is it as terrible as ours?" Momo asked, showing Marui his large bicycle wheel.

"Yeah. I don't know what to do with it," Marui admitted.

"Neither do we," Eiji sighed, staring at his weapon, a mouthpiece of a clarinet. A clarinet would have been nice, at least he could hit people on the head with it—but a mouthpiece was useless.

"Fshuu," Kaidoh hissed sadly in his corner, looking forlornly at his assigned weapon—a piece of electric wire.

"I guess all we can do is lock the door securely, pray that guys with bazookas like Echizen will not blast open our doors, and watch TV for three days until we die," Momo concluded.

"Watch TV till we die? Seems like a good idea," Eiji exclaimed ecstatically.

Though Marui did not really like this prospect, he knew that he himself couldn't come up with any better plan. He could find some useful weapon in the house and finish these stupid Seigaku people off later anyway—after he finished watching _America's Next Top Model_.

"But I want to watch the Discovery Channel."

"No, Disney rocks."

"But _Lord of the Rings_ is on right now—"

That was how the new "Watch TV Till We Die" alliance, with their base at the house, came into existence. Along with SWAT, with their base at the small hill near A8, and the Alliance with Too Many Hyoutei People, with their base at the large tree, three large parties had formed in the program.

**Hour 6**

**40 contestants remaining**

* * *

TBC. Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome.

To s-a-w: Thanks for the review:D Sorry about your neck. Mine is often sore too...:(

To kalista jia: Thanks for the review:D You see, they are tennis players after all...

To loove it!!: Thanks for the review:D I did want to make this somewhat angsty, but it all came out wrong... I wish one day I can able to write good angst:)


	13. Chapter 13

While Momo, Eiji and Marui were having a happy three-way wrestling match over the TV remote, Kaidoh watched in contempt and finally spoke. "Didn't our coach say that she would broadcast every six hours to notify us of all the deaths on the island? I think it's already six hours, at least according to that clock." He pointed at the cuckoo clock above the television.

"Yeah. That's strange." Kawamura nodded, a little nervously. Though he had made peace with himself, he was still worried about the others. A lot could happen in six hours, after all, and some of his friends and teammates could be dead already. Sure, he wouldn't enjoy hearing the names of his dead friendsrattled away like role call for school attendance, but if they were dead, he wanted to know. To Kawamura it was almost like ghost stories on camping nights. He was so afraid to listen to them, but needed to know how they ended, all the same.

"Why won't she just get the broadcast over with already—" Kaidoh muttered, tugging at the loose threads on the sofa in a troubled manner, when the booming voice of Coach Ryuuzaki almost sent him crashing to the floor in surprise.

"Hi everyone. Six hours have passed already. I'm sure you can't wait for the death report, can you?" She gave the contestants some time to shout "YAAAY!" but resumed her broadcasting when they didn't. "Unfortunately, no one had died in the past six hours. We are very disappointed."

"It's not our fault that we have those shitty weapons," Kaidoh yelled in the direction where he thought the loudspeakers might be.

Coach Ryuuzaki ignored him as well as the several others scattered around the island who made the same comment. "The program cannot go on like this. Therefore, we now add a new rule."

All listened attentively, except Momo and Marui who were still fighting over the remote.

"The new rule is: if no one dies in the next three hours, _all_ your collars explode. You get that? Three hours, no kill, all die. Come on, I know you have shitty weapons, but you ought to use your creativity to come up with something. Understand? Good. Im going to get breakfast."

Kawamura and Kaidoh stared at each other, mouths agape as Coach Ryuuzaki's voice died away.

"…I guess all we can do is wait for someone else to die," Kawamura told Kaidoh.

"Yeah," Kaidoh agreed.

Then they joined the others in the fight for the remote, because TV was just so attractive.

--

Meanwhile, the group consisting of Rikkai and Fudoumine and various miscellaneous people from other schools were getting to know each other. They were doing this by playing a name game called "Hello Hello How are you." For those who do not know this game (which should be everyone since I made this name up at the spur of the moment), I will briefly outline the rules: First, everyone sits down in a big circle. Second, everyone starts clapping hands, snapping fingers, and hitting the head of the person on their right in rhythm. And then, someone starts introducing himself.

"Hello hello, I am Sengoku, how are you?"

The person to his right repeats the first person's name, and then tacks his own after it.

"Hello hello, hello Sengoku, I am Davide, how are you?"

The third person does the same. And so on. This way, everyone gets to remember everyone's names.

"Hello hello, hello Sengoku, hello Davide, I am Yagyuu, how are you?"

"_I _am Yagyuu. Stop pretending to be me, Niou-kun."

"This is so not the time to play name games." Ryoma, calm and cool as usual, sighed from aside. "Will you guys come help figure out just how we can get off this island in one piece?"

"You see, we don't know each other that well, so we figured we might as well get to know each other's names," Sengoku explained innocently.

"This is not summer camp," Ryoma, the youngest and also the sanest of the group, pointed out exasperatedly.

The others, however, ignored him and went on with their game. Ryoma, being the youngest and therefore automatically the brattiest, turned to whine to Sanada.

"Where were we? Whose turn is it?" Davide asked.

"My turn, my turn! Hello hello, hello Sengoku, hello Davide, hello Yagyuu ("I told you, Akaya, that he is _not_ me!" Yagyuu cried in frustration), I am Kirihara, how are you?"

"Hello hello, hello Sengoku, hello Davide, hello Yagyuu, hello Kirihara, I am Kamio, how are you?" Kamio said in a single breath.

"You didn't need to do it that fast," Ibu Shinji, who sat at Kamio's right, complained. "You are making me dizzy."

"It's because I'm in the rhythm," Kamio explained. "Your turn."

"Okay. Hmm… hello hello, hello Sengoku-senpai, hello Davide, hello Yagyuu-senpai, hello Kirihara, hello Kamio, I am Ibu, how are you?"

"Enough," Sanada came over to scold them for letting their guards down, but stopped abruptly when he realized that Yukimura was playing too.

"Hello hello, hello Sengoku, hello Davide, hello Yagyuu, hello Kirihara, hello Kamio, hello Ibu, I am Yukimura, how—" Abruptly, he coughed up blood and collapsed in a heap.

"Wah, buchou's dead!" Kirihara screamed and began to run around in frantic circles.

"Seiichi!" Sanada shouted, rushing over to Yukimura's side. Luckily, Tezuka was holding his samurai sword for him, or else it would have gone through Yukimura and killed him then and there.

"Gen…Genichiro," Yukimura murmured lovingly, "you… you must become the pi… pillar of Rikkai…"

"Seiichi!" Sanada screamed dramatically as Yukimura fell into his arms.

"It's all right. He's not dead, just unconscious," the ever-dependable Tezuka commented from aside as he checked Yukimura's pulse. "I wish we could get him to a hospital immediately, but as we can't do such a thing—"

"What should we do?" Kirihara cried tearfully.

"That was exactly why I want you guys to help us come up with a way out of here instead of sitting there playing stupid games," Ryoma said, pointing at Kirihara accusingly.

All the people who were sitting in a circle playing name games sighed, because they knew they had to stand up and help. Sanada, however, sat on the floor with Yukimura in his arms. He had no strength left in him to stand up.

"Did you come up with any ideas when we were playing the name game?" Yagyuu asked as he pushed up his glasses in a gentlemanly manner. He had found his glasses in the box of clothes, and was so happy to have reunited with them that he pushed them up whenever he got the chance. He wouldn't know what to do without those lovely glasses.

"Since we figured out that they must be monitoring our collars with a computer software of some sort, we are thinking of hacking into their computer and messing up the programming or something. After we get the collars off, we steal a boat and sail home," Tachibana told him.

"Problem: we have no computer, no boat, there are no hackers among us, and none of us know how to drive a boat," Yagyuu pointed out calmly.

"We thought one of you might know," Tachibana explained. "That was why we keep asking you guys to come discuss together. As for hacking, we think that Fuji from Seigaku or Mizuki from St. Rudolph might have some experience in that field. Maybe even Inui and Renji."

"Well yeah… you know, I have an idea about transportation," Niou, who have been playing pranks for his whole life, piped up. "If something bad happens to that Coach Ryuuzaki, surely they will send a helicopter or something to pick her up. That way, if we set fire to the base and then hijack their helicopter—"

"But remember? If we get close to the base, our collars explode." Tachibana frowned and shook his head. "I'm sure one will have enough time to get the fire going before the collar blows up, but at least one person will have to die then. I don't like the idea of sacrificing anyone."

"Only novices need to be close to the base to burn it down." Niou smirked. He had been setting fires in school so many times that he had become quite an expert.

The others all stared at him in silence.

"—That's why I said we needed you guys to help think," Ryoma broke the silence, with a look of "I told you so" on his smug face.

So they left Sanada to take care of the unconscious Yukimura, and went to set fire to the base.

**Hour 7**

**40 contestants remaining**

* * *

TBC. Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome.

To hypertapper: Thanks for the review:D Yeah, some people (like Fuji) have all the luck xD

To ahem: Thanks for the review:D Sorry about not killing anyone yet. I think the dying will begin a few chapters later:D

To loove it!!: Thanks for the review:D Watching TV until I die seems like a good way to die:)

To kalista jia: Thanks for the review:D Unfortunately we have no Christmas vacation here. (cries)

To Riley.92: Thanks for the review:D I would love to see a chibi episode made out of this xD (though it will be rated R because most of them are naked:D)

To s-a-w: Thanks for the review:D Fuji's just that lucky:)


	14. Chapter 14

While the SWAT group were heading towards the base to set it on fire, the "Hyoutei and miscellaneous people" group were having their own name game as well. Inui and Yanagi, the ones who were not playing, however, were not at all angry at their teammates' irresponsible behaviors like Ryoma and some others in the SWAT group. Actually, they were quite glad to have them out of the way.

"If we press many buttons at the same time, the possibility of the collar malfunctioning on its own accord is three percent. Should we try it out?"

"It's too dangerous for us to try that, Sadaharu. Though the possibility that we both like dangerous experiments is one hundred percent, I still don't think you should try it."

"I didn't say I was going to try it with _my _collar. Horio, come here," Inui ordered.

"Never," Horio refused flatly. He didn't know what Inui was up to, but naturally he didn't believe it would be anything good.

"Come on, Horio. It won't hurt," Inui promised.

"I don't believe you."

"Okay then," Inui shrugged. "Now Renji, if we press this triangle button and this square button at the same time, the possibility that we can trigger the Super Mario secret attack is…"

As the two discussed video games, the others were still happily playing their name game.

"Hello hello, hello Gakuto, hello Kuwahara, hello Jiroh, hello Saeki, hello Kisarazu, hello Horio, ore-sama is Atobe, how are you?"

"Hello, hello, hello Gakuto, hello Kuwahara, hello Jiroh, hello Saeki, hello Kisarazu, hello Horio, hello Atobe, I am Oshitari, how are you?"

"Usu."

"Kabaji, it's your turn."

"Usu."

"This won't do," Jiroh lamented. "Every time we come to Kabaji the game just can't go on."

"We need to play a game that even people who can't say anything besides 'usu' can join," Jackal said. Jackal was a very nice person. He was so nice that he often picked up stray kittens in the rain, brought them home, and fed them with his sparse pocket money. Now he had twenty-two kittens and no money.

The others all agreed to this, and began trying to come up with a game that even people who could only say "usu" could join.

Then Inui and Yanagi approached them. "We have found a way to take off the collars," they announced in unison.

"Tell us." Atobe gestured.

"Look at this little light here." Yanagi pointed at the little yellow speck of light on his collar. "We think that this represents out heartbeats."

"This means that, if this thing cannot detect our heartbeats, we can probably get the collars off without having them explode. After all, if the collars still work after we die, it will be very dangerous for the people who are going to bring our bodies back to Japan," Inui added, pushing up his glasses. Then he suddenly realized that he did not have his glasses, and ran to hide behind Yanagi because he felt so shy.

"Well, it makes sense," Aoi Kentaro, captain of Rokkaku, piped up, "but if this thing cannot detect our heartbeats, it means that our hearts have stopped beating, and if our hearts stop beating, we will be dead."

"Absolutely right." Yanagi nodded. "So, now what we need is a way to keep these the collars from detecting our heartbeats _without_ dying. Sadaharu and I have come up with three methods. One, use the electromagnetic waves in those Hyoutei cell phones to mess up the programming for these collars. Two, drown everyone so our hearts will all stop beating, take off the collars, and then revive everyone by CPR. Three, go underground, so the monitoring devices cannot detect the signals from our collars, and the hosts will think that our hearts are not beating anymore."

"The first one won't work." Mizuki rolled his eyes. "The second one is way too dangerous. The third one—how the heck can we go underground, nfu?"

"We dig holes," Yanagi and Inui declared at the same time, each whipping out a large stick from behind their backs.

"Dig holes? And I actually thought you guys were smart—" Mizuki began, but his voice was drowned out by the enthusiastic cries of others.

"Holes! I _love_ digging holes," Jiroh yelled, grabbing a stick to use as a shovel.

"Holes! Holes! Holes!" Aoi screamed, jumping up and down.

"Holes, holes, holesholesholes!" Gakuto was somersaulting out of happiness.

"I'm going to dig a hole that goes all the way to Australia," Saeki declared.

"That's not very impressive. Ore-sama will dig one that goes all the way to Antarctica." Atobe smirked.

"Why am I stuck with a bunch of idiots?" Mizuki muttered to himself, but no one heard him because they were already happily digging away.

--

"Renji, if they go on digging like this, the possibility that someone will fall in a hole and die is 88 percent."

"Yeah. At least we won't have to worry about dying for these three hours."

Then the two evil datamen happily went under a tree to chat.

--

"A-Akutsu-senpai—"

"What?" Akutsu turned, shooting Dan Taiichi a vicious glance that meant "I don't want to talk to you. Mind your own business, kid."

"Look, the sunrise. It's so beautiful," Dan whispered breathlessly.

"The sunrise? Did no one tell you that sunrises are for ninnies? Only ninnies say that sunrises are beautiful," Akutsu growled, shooting Dan another one of his looks.

"But, but, but didn't senpai just showed me where Venus was a few hours ago?"

"It's different. Stargazing is for philosophers. Sunrises are for ninnies."

"Oh."

They were silent for a moment. Dan still looked enthralled by the sunrise, even though his Akutsu-senpai had said it was for ninnies.

"Um, senpai…"

"What? Can you shut up a bit? You're getting on my nerves."

"Senpai, do you think the seeds we planted will grow into very big lettuces?"

"Yeah." Akutsu sighed, gazing into the horizon. "Probably as big as you are."

"Wow. That big? That's so cool."

"The people who will live here in the future will be very thankful to us," Akutsu added, seeing the genuine smile on Dan's face. Suddenly, he almost felt like smiling too.

They were silent for yet another moment.

"Uh, senpai…"

"What? Can you just finish everything you want to say in one turn and stop senpai-ing me?"

"I, I'm sorry, senpai… but senpai, I'm so sleepy."

"Sleepy? Sleep then."

"But senpai, don't you want to sleep too?"

"Idiot, if I go to sleep too and someone comes with a gun, we will be dead in seconds. Now, you go to sleep, and I'll keep watch."

"Thank you, senpai."

Akutsu knew that if someone did come with a gun, whether he was asleep or not, he would never stand a chance, but he still knew that he would protect this annoying, stupid, and overly talkative little kid no matter what.

Akutsu was the kind of person who kicked whoever he saw out of his way. He wasn't sure why, though, but when it came to Dan Taiichi, he couldn't help being protective.

**Hour 7**

**40 contestants remaining**

* * *

TBC. Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome!

To s-a-w: Thanks for the review:D Belated Merry Christmas to you too! Or should I say belated happy new year? ;)

To shourin: Thanks for the review:D Tezuka would never do that xD


	15. Chapter 15

While all this was happening, Sanada and Yukimura were sitting beside a nice and peaceful pond they found. Yukimura, after coughing up some blood, felt instantly better, and was back to his smiley self right away. Sanada, however, was feeling dizzy because he had been so worried about Yukimura. He wished his beloved captain would not just choose to cough up blood at random times.

"Are you all right?" he asked Yukimura for the thirteenth time in the past hour.

"I'm okay. Thanks, Genichiro." Yukimura smiled. Sanada stared at the lovely smile and got dizzier and dizzier.

"I didn't really help much," he managed to say despite the dizziness.

"Nah, Genichiro, you know I won't know what to do without—"

"Freeze! Hand us your clothes!"

This command came so suddenly that Sanada and Yukimura both instinctively froze. They recognized the voice as that of Shishido Ryou from Hyoutei. Shishido and Ootori had been looking for clothes, but got lost in the process, and not until now did they finally find the right place. The box of clothes was gone, however, so they decided to rob someone who had something to wear.

Sanada was all ready to surrender and hand in his clothes because Shishido sounded so commanding and confident, but then he remembered that he had a samurai sword to protect Yukimura, so he defiantly roared, "Tarundoru!" and pointed his samurai sword at Shishido.

"Sorry," Shishido, who did not have a better weapon than a samurai sword, quickly threw up his hands and apologized. Sanada advanced on him, sword in hand, looking more menacing with each step.

"Ah, aren't you Shishido and Ootori from Hyoutei?" Yukimura exclaimed from where he was sitting. "It's all right, Genichiro, put down your weapon."

Sanada sighed and put down his weapon, even though he was really hoping to butcher Shishido for scaring him like that. After all, _he_ was Yukimura's weapon, so he had to listen to Yukimura at all accosts.

"Well, um," Shishido began awkwardly, once he saw that Sanada had tucked the sword away, "do you guys know where we can find clothes? We are a bit, uh, cold."

"I think Sengoku has them all," Yukimura explained, a little apologetically. "It _is_ a bit cold though…well, you guys can take my jacket then."

"Seiichi, you need your jacket. With your medical condition—" Sanada cried out in alarm when he saw Yukimura pull off his yellow jacket and hand it to Shishido.

"But Genichiro, they can't just go around naked," Yukimura pointed out calmly. "Well—how about you guys take Genichiro's jacket instead?"

Sanada scowled, but he obeyed Yukimura and took off his jacket.

"There's only one jacket," Ootori murmured. "Senpai, you take it. I'm not cold."

"No way. I'm older, so I say you take it," Shishido declared.

"But senpai—"

"Aw, Choutaro, you can have it. I'm not cold."

Yukimura, smiling, watched the Silver Pair argue for a moment, and then put in, "Why don't you just cut it in half then?" He held up the sword to offer help.

_Seiichi, not my beautiful jacket! _Sanada was crying inside, but he could never say no to Yukimura.

"Thank you so much," the sweet-natured Ootori was on the verge of tears as he gratefully accepted one half of what had once been Sanada's jacket. Shishido was already trying his half on with enthusiastic happiness.

"Ah, that's not a big deal," Yukimura said happily, a tranquil smile on his face. "Now, now, Genichiro, see how nice your jacket looks on them? Genichiro?"

Seeing that Sanada did not reply, Yukimura turned to look for him and realized that while they were busy being polite Sanada had stepped on something slippery and fell into the pond.

"Oh dear, it's all our fault. What should we do?" Poor Ootori cried, wringing his hands. He had a tendency to blame everything on himself.

"We didn't mean to—" Shishido stammered nervously. Yukimura was Yukimura, after all, _and_ he had a sword. If Yukimura got mad, there was no telling what would happen to the unfortunate Silver Pair, even though it wasn't their fault.

"It's all right. Look, Genichiro's right here," Yukimura stated, pointing calmly at the surface of the pond. Golden rays of light came shooting out of the water, and out burst a beautiful goddess who was holding a Sanada in each hand. One was wearing a yellow Rikkai uniform and the other was dressed in marvelous gold. The goddess smiled gracefully and began to speak.

"Is the one you lost this golden Sanada, or the yellow Sanada?"

"Senpai, senpai, I've heard this story before," Ootori whispered to Shishido. "If we truthfully say 'neither,' the goddess will not only return us the real Sanada but also give us the two other Sanadas as presents for our honesty."

"But Choutaro, that yellow one _is_ the Sanada we lost," Shishido pointed out.

Yukimura, meanwhile, was smiling a smile as graceful as the goddess's. "This yellow Sanada is the one we lost."

"Very honest," the goddess nodded in approval. "I will give you this golden Sanada as well to reward your honesty." Then she put both the real Sanada and the golden Sanada on the shore and disappeared in a golden cloud of light.

"Genichiro, how can you be so careless? Your clothes are all wet," Yukimura reprimanded as soon as he got his weapon Sanada back. "Luckily you have already given your jacket to these lovely Hyoutei people, or it would have gotten wet too."

Poor Sanada could not find a suitable reply to this and could only shiver.

"Um, so what should we do with this, uh, fake Sanada?" Ootori began cautiously from aside. The golden Sanada looked exactly like Sanada except that he was golden. The only word he could produce was "tarundoru".

"Since Coach Ryuuzaki said that we need to kill at least one person in three hours, we might as well kill him," Yukimura suggested, picking up the sword and pointing it at the unsuspecting golden Sanada.

"That doesn't count. It's cheating," Coach Ryuuzaki, seeing this through the monitoring cameras, yelled through the broadcast. Yukimura sighed and put the sword back into its sheath.

--

Because everyone on the island could hear the broadcast, Mizuki, who was currently cheating on a card game he was playing with Kabaji, Jackal and Oshitari(the cards were made from Inui's notebook paper), thought Coach Ryuuzaki was referring to him and was so shocked that he threw all the cards into the sky.

--

"Okay then, so what do we do with him? Should we just let him go free into the wild or—" Shishido put in, staring at the golden Sanada.

"Let's keep him. Maybe we can eat him sometime later," Yukimura suggested.

"Good point." So Shishido tied up the golden Sanada with one of Sanada's jacket sleeves and held him captive.

Sanada could only wonder what the heck was wrong with the world.

--

"Yuuta."

"Gaaaahhhh!" Hearing his name called by such a familiar voice, Fuji Yuuta, who had been happily discussing Yu Gi Oh GX cards with Kurobane Harukaze from Rokkaku, screamed in shock. "A… aniki!"

"Gaaaahhhh!" Turning around to see a smiling person holding a machine gun in his hands, Kurobane Harukaze, who had been happily discussing Yu Gi Oh GX cards with Fuji Yuuta from St. Rudolph, also screamed in shock. "Aniki! I mean, uh, Yuuta's brother!"

"Don't be scared," Fuji (the older one) said with a smile. "I am here to help you."

"To help us?" Bane exclaimed, eyes lighting up with hope.

"Yes." Fuji nodded, expecting Bane to immediately start firing off questions like "so can you help us get out of here?"

Instead, to his surprise (and Fuji Syusuke is hardly ever surprised), Bane asked, "Do you know who has a C-shaped sign as a weapon?"

"Hmm. Let me check," Fuji murmured, taking out his real weapon—a complete list of everyone's weapon. Some people just have all the luck.

"Ah, here it is. Marui Bunta from Rikkai has the C-shaped sign."

"Huh? But his name doesn't even start with C," Bane exclaimed.

"And just think of all the hours we have wasted trying to think of someone whose last name starts with C," Yuuta lamented. "Anyway, shouldn't we go look for him so we can make a large KFC sign?"

"Not a bad idea," Fuji agreed. As long as he could be with his brother, it was a good idea to him. "Let's go look for him then."

--

Marui Bunta, who was watching_ Spiderman_ on HBO, felt a sudden shiver across his spine.

**Hour 7 **

**40 contestants remaining**

**

* * *

**

TBC. Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome.

To loove it!!: Wow. Germany? That's so cool! I've always wanted to visit there... I'm glad you liked the AkuDan part xD Thanks for the review! Danke sehr! (Sorry, don't know much German...)

To kalista jia: Thanks for the review:D I hope I didn't make Akutsu too OOC...


	16. Chapter 16

There was dried blood on the stone walls. Fuji Syusuke crept down the hallway slowly, footsteps resounding on the pavement. Broken bodies of dead soldiers were scattered all over the floor. _They were once alive and breathing too,_ Fuji thought.

He held the machine gun tightly in front of his chest. As he turned a corner, he saw in the corridor the remains of a large statue. Debris was everywhere.

Then he heard the footsteps. He was not moving, so it couldn't have been his own.

Steadily, the footsteps came closer, and closer, and closer.

Fuji lifted his eyes to see that the large statue had somehow removed itself from the foundation and started walking towards him. It was a heavy statue of a god made of marble, and it had six hands. Four of the six hands held scythes.

The statue stopped in front of Fuji. He fired at its throat with his machine gun, but it did not seem to affect the statue a bit. The scythes came closer, and closer—

Then Fuji disappeared. All was left was a tombstone with his name on it. A cute girly voice giggled "I'm lovin' it!"

"Aaaaahhhhhhhh!" Kaidoh awoke, screaming. He realized that the weird scene involving Fuji was all a dream. He wondered why he always had such queer dreams.

"What is it? You okay?" Kawamura came to sit by him, looking concerned. Since Kaidoh had no fighting chance of acquiring the TV remote against Momo, Marui, and Eiji, he could only sit around feeling bored and feel asleep eventually. Kawamura saw this, and knew that it was not safe to fall asleep in such a game, but being the nice guy that he was, he didn't try to wake Kaidoh up.

"No, nothing. It was just a dream," Kaidoh murmured, cold perspiration on his back. "It was a dream about Fuji-senpai. He had this large machine gun in his hands."

"Wow, what a neat dream," Eiji remarked, still gazing at the television.

"It might be a kind of omen," Momo, who watched psychic reading shows faithfully everyday, suggested.

"It can't be an omen, okay?" Marui smirked sarcastically. "Since when did your Kaidoh become a prophet? Anyway, Fuji's not even—"

Before he could even finish, several gunshots rang out.

"Someone broke our lock," Eiji cried, staring at the front door. "They are coming in! We're dead!"

"Hide," Kawamura ordered. Everyone picked up their (useless) weapons and ran around the room looking for a place to conceal themselves, all the time keeping a frightened and wary eye on the front door that was soon going to be opened.

"We must not surrender," Momo yelled, holding his bicycle wheel. "This is our base, our wonderful base in which we can watch TV until we die. We cannot give in, guys! Hey viper, scoot over, I can't get in." He tried to squeeze himself beside Kaidoh, who was situated under a table.

"Your words and actions don't match," Kaidoh muttered and obligingly scooted over, but before Momo could hide himself, the front door of their peaceful base was thrown open. Fuji Syusuke stood there in all his glory.

"Fu…Fuji-senpai!" Momo sputtered, panicking. We cannot blame him for panicking, for anyone would have panicked when seeing someone holding a machine gun. Even if that someone was his senpai.

_This is_ _just like my dream. It was an omen,_ Kaidoh thought, trembling. He tried very hard to hide his fear, for letting his enemy Momo see that he was afraid was simply not an option. He chanted to himself in his head. _Kaoru, must be strong, must be strong…_

"Ah, Momo and Kaidoh." Fuji nodded in recognition as he stepped gracefully into the room. "Hey, Taka-san, I see you behind the curtains. Eiji, pretending that you are a vase is not going to work. I see you."

Eiji and Kawamura could only gingerly step out from their hiding places, eyes glued to the machine gun. They knew that Fuji was their good friend, but this is a _machine gun_ we are talking about.

"Don't be nervous," Fuji said calmly, surveying his petrified teammates. "You are not the ones I am looking for. Do you know where Marui Bunta is?"

Kawamura gaped at Fuji's dangerous smile. He knew this smile better than anyone else. Though Kawamura was not exactly familiar with Marui, he did not think that Marui was a bad person altogether, and quickly decided to shield him for as long as he could.

"I don't know. We have never seen him since we left the classroom," Kawamura lied bravely.

"Can't be," Fuji reasoned. "There is this long trail of bubblegum outside your house that we followed like Hansel and Gretel. No one else could have left this bubblegum trail."

Kawamura looked outside the door to realize that there really was a bubblegum trail. Marui had left this trail to mark out where he was, so his teammates would find him more easily. However, his teammates never found him, and it was Fuji who picked up the trail instead.

"Well, what do you want him for?" Kawamura asked, stalling for time. _Marui-san, get out by the bathroom window! I can't shield you much longer!_ He thought.

"It's actually his weapon that I want," Fuji explained.

"You mean that C-shaped thing?" Kawamura asked in surprise.

"Yeah. Hey, you guys can come out now. It's safe, they are my friends," Fuji called out to Yuuta and Bane who were hiding behind a tree. They came out accordingly, exhibiting their weapons. Kawamura wondered why these two would want to hide in the first place, for with Fuji's weapons they couldn't be any safer.

"We want to make a KFC sign," Fuji told Kawamura.

"I don't know where Marui is," Momo piped up, "but his weapon is right here on the sofa." He picked up the sign and tossed it to Fuji, who placidly put the three signs together in the correct order.

After a minute had passed, Momo exclaimed sadly, "Nothing happened."

Then, all of a sudden, Coach Ryuuzaki's voice came blaring over the loudspeakers.

"Very well, you found our secret bonus. Five minutes later we will send a helicopter over at section K9 and drop down a Kentucky Fried Chicken meal enough to make ten people full. Go for it, guys!"

As her voice faded away, the people in the house (including Kaidoh, who finally mustered up enough courage to crawl out from under the table and Marui, who was actually hiding in the kitchen and came out when he decided that Fuji wasn't really going to hurt him) looked at each other disappointedly.

"Which section are we in?" Bane asked the others.

"Who knows? We don't have maps." Yuuta shrugged.

All eight of them sighed together. "Then we will have to let others take the fried chicken."

--

"K9. Isn't K9—" Tezuka began ponderingly.

"Isn't K9 right here?" Davide finished for him, pointing at a sign on the ground that said "K9".

"Lucky! We get Kentucky Fried Chicken," Sengoku shouted happily.

"This is not the time to think about chicken," the ever-responsible Tachibana tried to calm him down. "Don't forget that the reason that we are here is to set fire to the base and get a helicopter to come over."

"Well yeah." Sengoku nodded. "Guess you're right. How do we start a fire then?"

"We don't need a fire anymore. A helicopter _is_ coming already," Ryoma pointed out from aside.

"This helicopter won't land though. It will probably just drop the chicken down and go. We still need to get your coach in some sort of accident so it will land to pick her up and bring her to a hospital, remember?" Kamio mused.

"That's so troublesome." Kirihara sighed. He could think about nothing but fried chicken now that the topic was mentioned.

"How about I just dress up as Coach Ryuuzaki and pretend that I am injured?" Niou suggested with an air of indifference.

The others all stared at him, speechless.

"—We will all pretend that we didn't see," Yagyuu promised him.

It was at this moment that everyone realized that a trickster was quite a handy thing to have around.

**Hour 8**

**40 contestants remaining**

* * *

TBC. Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome.

To loove it!!: Thanks for the review:D The thing is, I haven't watched .hack before… what is it about? Seems interesting xD

To kalista jia: Glad you liked the SanaYuki moment xDD It sounds kinky to me too…


	17. Chapter 17

At the base, Coach Ryuuzaki was not having a good time.

"This is quite enough," she stated impatiently, sipping green tea. "It's been eight hours already, and they are all still alive. I can't tolerate this."

"Maybe it's because the island is too big. If they don't run into each other, they won't start fighting," a soldier stammered nervously. He was always nervous when talking to Coach Ryuuzaki, and felt relieved when she did not seem enraged, and even offering him some fries.

Coach Ryuuzaki raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Then how do we make them meet each other?"

"Usually we employ danger zones," the leader of the soldiers explained. "Every few hours the number of danger zones increases. Whenever someone steps in one of these zones, their collars blow up and they die."

"Sounds good. Let's do this then." Coach Ryuuzaki nodded in approval. "I'm sure your programmers can manage this, can't they?"

"But wouldn't adding rules randomly in the middle of the game be a bit—" a soldier began.

"Are you saying," Coach Ryuuzaki suggested, "that you are going to disobey me?"

"No!" The soldier quickly cried, remembering the horrible death of one of his colleagues. "Madam, which sections are we going to make danger zones? We usually do it three to four at a time, increasing the number every six hours—"

"Too troublesome. We might as well make the whole island a danger zone." Coach Ryuuzaki waved the soldier away in impatience.

"But everyone will die right away. There will be no game," the poor soldier pointed out.

"Well then, let's leave just one section and make all the others danger zones."

"One? But won't that be a bit too small?"

"Ah, whatever. Fine, make every section except the nine in the middle of the island danger zones then," Coach Ryuuzaki ordered and went on munching on her fries.

"Yes, madam. Please do the broadcast now," the soldier put the microphone into Coach Ryuuzaki's hands.

Therefore, this broadcast was heard all over the island a few seconds later.

"Good morning everyone! Only half an hour is left from the original three-hour limit I have given in the last broadcast. If you don't hurry up with your killing now, you will all die in half an hour. Also, we have a new rule. At the end of the next hour, all sections except the middle ones: D4, D6, D6, E4, E5, E6, F4, F5 and F6, will become danger zones. This means that if you are not in the nine sections by the time the next hour is up, you will be blown into pieces. Get that? Start killing already, the audience is getting bored."

Since this was an experiment done for a psychology professor, it was not really aired on television, and therefore Coach Ryuuzaki was the only one watching the show. _They do not need to know that though,_ she thought.

--

"Which section are we in?" Bane asked the others situated in the house, also known as the base of the Watch Television Till We Die Alliance.

"Who knows? We have no map, remember?" Yuuta replied.

All eight of them sighed. "Then all we can do is watch television until the next hour is up and die."

--

"Get up," Akutsu growled, kicking Dan Taiichi, who had fallen asleep on his shoulder.

"Senpai? What's wrong?" Taiichi sat up and rubbed his big eyes.

"We can't stay here. We'll die," Akutsu stated simply, dragging Dan up with one muscled hand.

"Oh," Dan whimpered sleepily but obeyed. This was Akutsu, after all.

They walked in silence for a moment when Dan spoke up.

"Senpai…"

"Huh?"

"—Thank you for not leaving me behind when I was asleep."

Akutsu almost turned to punch Dan in the face and yell "how can you ever think that I'll leave you behind?" but didn't because he wanted to maintain his image of a cool, cold-blooded senpai.

Also, though he would not admit it even to himself, he could never bring himself to punch Dan.

--

Tezuka was the only one who had a map on the whole island. It was his weapon.

"We are now at F3," he told his mates. "If we go a little bit south we get to F4."

"We have one hour left. It ought to be enough," Tachibana told the others, who were gathered around him in a circle because they did not want to watch Niou undress. "We will have to grab the helicopter in this hour."

"Niou-senpai, are you finished yet?" Kirihara asked. His eyes were covered by Yagyuu's hands because the gentlemanly senpai did not want his mind to be scarred. Yagyuu himself, however, was the only one who had no problem watching Niou undress since he had seen it so many times already.

"Almost finished," Niou assured him. "This bra is so difficult to put on." The bra was Davide's weapon.

"Has anyone actually considered what we are going to do once Niou-senpai gets the helicopter to land?" Ryoma whispered from aside. He was the youngest in the group and therefore had the most sense.

"As long as we do not let out guard down, we will succeed," Tezuka said calmly.

--

"According to my data, we are right here at F5, so we needn't move at all," Inui announced solemnly to Renji.

"You are right," Renji agreed. "According to my data, the two eastern ones of these nine sections are all water, the three sections on the west are mostly trees and a few houses, and our section here in the middle is mainly filled with—"

"—Holes. Twenty-eight of them, to be exact," Inui stated.

"Yay! I've dug seven," Gakuto cried, bouncing up and down.

"That's not very impressive. Ore-sama has eight," Atobe jeered.

"The others will probably come to our section sooner or later," Yanagi said thoughtfully, "and they might fall into one of these holes and perish."

"Yeah. But now, Renji, if no one falls into those holes in the next hour, what do we do? Do we attack someone?"

"But my weapon is aluminum paper," Yanagi lamented their lack of good weapons.

"I guess we'll have to just press the _explode_ button on Horio's collar then," Inui decided.

"Fine with me. He's _your_ kouhai, not mine."

--

"How do we know where these nine sections are without a map?" Yukimura wondered, sitting on the meadow without a trace of nervousness.

"These sections should be somewhere near the middle of the island," Sanada muttered, brow wrinkled in thought. "We should try to move towards the middle of the island."

"But which direction is the middle of the island?" Shishido asked.

"It is now eight in the morning, so the sun must be at the east, and—" Sanada began.

"But we don't even know whether we should go east or west or neither if we want to get to the middle of the island," Shishido pointed out.

"Now that's a problem." Sanada frowned. He wondered why he was the only one doing any thinking.

"Ah, the middle of the island must be in that direction," Yukimura piped up, pointing.

The others all looked at him questioningly.

"See, there's a sign right there that says _To the middle of the island—three kilometers left._"

There really was such a sign. In fact, there were several other signs. One said _Boar hunting, this way—thirty boars left_ and another read _Tenimyu, this way—eighty seats left._

So the Silver Pair, Yukimura, Sanada and the fake Sanada decided to follow the sign and started walking towards the middle of the island.

**Hour 8**

**40 contestants remaining**

* * *

TBC. Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome.

To s-a-w: Thanks for the review:D I figured Kaidoh would be the kind of person who has violent dreams…

To loove it!!: Thanks for the review and the explanation. It seems like a fun game that I should try some time.

To kalista jia: Thanks for the review:D I'm getting pretty hungry too.


	18. Chapter 18

"Oh no!" Carlos, a curly-haired twenty-three-year-old who just graduated from army school, cried as he looked through the nearby window on the helicopter.

"What's wrong?" His mate, Parker, asked absentmindedly as he chatted with his girlfriend on AIM.

"Look, Coach Ryuuzaki is in trouble! See right down there, she's rolling on the ground in agony," Carlos explained to his friend, pointing down.

"But she was quite fine when we started out, wasn't she?" Parker raised an eyebrow quizzically.

"Maybe a contestant attacked her in the few minutes we weren't looking," Carlos suggested.

"No, I think she's in labor. Look at that stomach. It's like…wow," Parker remarked, eyeing the woman's huge belly with awe.

"Really? But she wasn't pregnant when we started out," Carlos pointed out, looking more puzzled than ever.

--

"Niou-senpai, why did you have to stick all those clothes into your shirt? Coach Ryuuzaki is not pregnant. This won't fool them," Kirihara whispered dubiously from between the bushes where he was hiding.

"I've always wanted to try playing a pregnant woman, that's why," Niou retorted and went on with his performance. "Ah, ah, it's comiiiing!"

"You are going to ruin our plan just because you have always wanted to try playing a pregnant woman?" Ryoma yelled, glancing upwards at the slowly approaching chopper. "Cut it out before they see."

"I think they already saw," Tachibana murmured worriedly. He was right. The helicopter had apparently located Niou and was making a beeline for him.

Ryoma sighed at his misfortune of having landed with a bunch of unreliable seniors and went back into the bushes to play with his bazooka. If Niou was going to foil the plan, there was nothing he could do about it.

"Since they already saw, I might as well do my best," Niou declared and started moaning and rolling around even louder and dramatically. Davide played along enthusiastically, shouting encouragements such as "You can do it! I see the head!"

Poor Ryoma cover his ears with his hands.

--

"You're right, she wasn't pregnant when we started out on this 'throw down the fried chicken' mission," Parker agreed with his curly-haired co-pilot.

"Did she get pregnant in the course of these ten minutes?" Carlos gasped. "That was incredible! A miracle!"

"With the biotechnology progressing like it is these days, you never know what miracles will happen," Parker sighed contently.

"Coach Ryuuzaki must have wanted a child for ever so long," Carlos wiped a tear away from his tanned face. "Hang on, Coach, we're coming!"

"Ah, the beauty of life." Parker pushed open a window and yelled downwards. "Coach, you can do it. Believe in yourself and just breathe. One, two, one, two—"

--

"They actually _believed_ this crap?" On the ground, Ryoma exclaimed in horror.

"Idiots," Kamio added with disgust.

"You are no better, considering that your hand is still stuck in my collar," Shinji remarked thoughtfully from beside Kamio. Kamio wanted to punch him for saying that, but with one hand attached to Shinji's collar in such a troublesome angle, he did not succeed.

Kirihara whispered amid the chaos, "Weren't we supposed to hijack this helicopter?"

Ryoma realized that he was right, and quickly raised his bazooka like they had planned.

"Freeze!"

Parker and Carlos, who had just emerged from the helicopter they had landed, never dreamed that such a thing would occur and obediently put their hands in the air.

"Good. Leave us the helicopter and get out of my sight," Ryoma ordered smugly.

"No, we need at least one person to drive this thing for us," Shinji reminded him.

"Oh, right. Okay, you on the left, get out of my sight, and you," he gestured at Carlos, "must fly the helicopter for us."

"But Coach Ryuuzaki needs medication real soon," hotheaded Carlos cried. "You can blast me with your bazooka if you like, but we _must_ bring her to a hospital."

"I completely agree," Parker cried, feeling heroic all of a sudden.

"Uh, forget about me. Just leave the helicopter," Coach Ryuuzaki, who was Niou, coughed out weakly once he saw that things weren't working as he had expected.

"Huh? Why?" Parker asked, dumbfounded.

"He's not Coach Ryuuzaki," Carlos shrieked, suddenly realizing the mistake.

"Took you long enough." Niou rolled his eyes.

"You students should play the game like good kids will. Trying to fool us is not tolerated," Carlos, once seeing that he had been made a fool of, hollered in anger and embarrassment. "We were going to bring you Kentucky Fried Chicken, but now I decided not to give it to you because you have been disobedient."

Parker nudged Carlos. "But he has a bazooka."

Carlos quickly changed his mind. "Right. Well, okay, we'll give you the helicopter, and—wait! I have a gun too." He whipped out a machine gun.

Ryoma stared in shock. His bazooka wouldn't be able to compete against a machine gun that _worked_.

"Put your bazooka down or I blast open his head," Carlos announced, pointing his gun at Niou, who was still in his clutches.

"Kill him then, I don't care," Ryoma confessed. He couldn't even remember Niou's name.

"And I thought we were friends," Niou muttered, pretending to look forlorn.

It seemed that Carlos and Parker had the upper hand now. But the problem with these two was that they had no guts and couldn't bring themselves to fire, so they stepped backwards slowly and carefully, backing themselves into the helicopter, threw Niou down on the ground, shut the door and flew away. They regretted over their cowardice later when they were safely in the sky, but they had to admit that they loved life too much to actually destroy one. The incident of fake Ryuuzaki and her fake baby had reminded them of the beautiful moments of life, and they both decided to quit working for the army and become firefighters instead when they got home.

--

On the ground, the group of contestants who failed their mission was already discussing their defeat.

"We let our guard down," Tezuka concluded. To him, it was the justification to every problem.

"We can do it next time," Tachibana assured everyone kindly.

"There won't be a next time. They won't be fooled that easily again," Shinji said pessimistically.

"You guys should have tried harder._ I _did a good job," Niou lamented as he pulled out clothes and bras he had stuffed in his shirt.

"We didn't even get the fried chicken." Davide sighed wistfully.

"This is not the time to sigh about fried chicken," Kamio scolded him.

"But we do have the fried chicken. When you guys had their attention, I circumnavigated them and got these from the helicopter," lucky Sengoku put in, showing them a large bag full of delicious-smelling food.

"Ah, wonderful," Davide gave a shout of excitement and started munching away.

"Are you an idiot?" Kamio yelled at Sengoku exasperately. "You had a chance to get to the helicopter, and all you got was fried chicken? Why didn't you take over the helicopter, or smash their heads from the back?"

"I couldn't find any instruments to smash their heads, and I can't fly a helicopter," Sengoku told him innocently.

"Aw, Kamio-kun, don't blame him. After all, if we smash their heads there will be no one left to drive for us, and if Sengoku-kun flies the helicopter away, we don't get a ride either. Also, we still have our collars, and if we fly anywhere outside the island the collars will explode, so it won't work either way. This plan has too many flaws, you see."

"Why didn't you say so earlier?" Kamio screamed in frustration.

"I hate to spoil the happy atmosphere," Shinji explained. Kamio wanted to bury his face in his hands, but since he had only one free hand, he smacked himself on his forehead.

"It was a good chance." Tachibana sighed, patting Kamio on the back soothingly. "I guess we could have done better than this. Now all we have are fried chicken."

"We have a laptop also," Yagyuu piped up. Everyone who had already forgotten that he was there at all turned to look at him in amazement.

"Akaya and I went with Sengoku on the helicopter," Yagyuu told them, "and I figured that we may need a computer to help mess up the programming of our collars in some way, and so snatched their laptop. I'm sure Renji and some others will be able to do something with this."

"Wow, Hiroshi, you _are_ clever," Niou remarked admiringly, though Yagyuu secretly suspected that Niou was not admiring him because he thought of snatching the laptop but because he, a gentleman, actually _stole_ something.

"Wait," Tezuka began, "did you say that Kirihara was with you? Where is he now?"

Yagyuu pushed up his glasses. "I think he is still up there on the helicopter."

**Hour 8**

**40 contestants remaining**

* * *

TBC. Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome.

To loove it!!: Horio's just there to make the number nice and even xD Thanks for the review:D

To s-a-w: If I were his senpai I would have wanted him dead too :D Thanks for the review!


	19. Chapter 19

"Wait, you mean Kirihara is still up there on the helicopter?" Tachibana yelled in horror.

"It seems that it is so." Yagyuu nodded solemnly and calmly pushed up his glasses.

"This won't do," Tachibana cried. "Once he leaves the island area, his collar will explode. And then Kirihara will…he will…"

"That is too sad," Kamio and Shinji both started weeping. Fudoumine was a very nice and sympathetic bunch of people. On the other hand, Kirihara's Rikkai seniors did not find this serious at all.

"He's like a cockroach, our Akaya," Niou said fondly, "you can't kill him that easily."

"Yeah, so don't worry," Yagyuu assured the sobbing Fudoumine people, who looked at him like he was a madman.

"The biggest problem now is that we have less than twenty minutes to get into one of the nine sections that are not going to become danger zones. We better hurry," Tezuka announced from aside. Everyone nodded, and they picked up their fried chicken, bazooka, and clothes, heading towards the nine safe sections. Tezuka had the only map on the island, so they could be sure that they were going in the right direction. The kind Fudoumine people, still worried about Kirihara, looked up at the sky from time to time, as if hoping to get a glimpse of the seaweed-headed junior.

--

If he left the island area, his collar would explode. Kirihara knew this.

The two pilots had not noticed his existence yet. Apparently they had not recovered from the shock of the hijacking incident to really function normally. They hadn't even noticed that they have lost the fried chicken and a laptop. The helicopter was rising steadily, and Kirihara was troubled. If they kept flying like this, no doubt they would leave the island soon, and Kirihara really didn't want to die just yet.

He watched the island become smaller and smaller from the window, and knew that he could wait no longer.

"Stop! Take off my collar for me!" he yelled, leaping out from where he was concealed, holding a fire extinguisher he found as a weapon.

"AAAhhhhh! How did you get here?" Carlos and Parker shrieked in surprise and almost proceeded to back away from Kirihara. With red eyes and a red fire extinguisher, Kirihara looked like a little demon.

"It's because I'm god. Stop the helicopter now, or my collar will explode," Kirihara ordered.

"But you are _supposed_ to die in this program," Parker pointed out, finally regaining his senses. "Why should we help you?"

"The bomb in my collar is pretty strong," Kirihara explained, "so if I explode, you guys will probably die too." He wasn't sure if the bomb was that powerful, but he had acquired excellent lying skills from his senpai and figured out that this was the perfect time to put them into use.

The two pilots' mouths dropped open.

"Fine, we'll do it."

--

"Renji, the three hours Coach Ryuuzaki mentioned are almost up," Inui began. He was sitting idly under a tree, watching his mates dig holes in blissful ignorance.

"Yeah. There're only a few minutes left," Yanagi muttered in agreement.

"If I leave Horio alone and just sit around and wait, the possibility of us dying here in a few minutes is ninety-eight percent."

"You're right. But dying while discussing data with you, Sadaharu, is quite the best way I can imagine to die. At least it is much better than dying while discussing data with foolish people like Yanagisawa."

"You wouldn't be discussing data with Yanagisawa whether you are dying or not. That is ridiculous," Inui pointed out. "Come to think of it, we haven't seen Yanagisawa around at all. Wonder how he is now? Maybe we'll meet him in heaven a few minutes later."

"Heaven? But the possibility of you landing in hell is 99.9 percent."

"True. Then we'll meet him in hell maybe."

"But this is not the time to talk about Yanagisawa and hell." Yanagi sighed, leaning against the tree, his eyes closed. "We have only one minute left, you know. Enough time for us to finish our last good-bye speeches."

Inui nodded. "Correct. I have calculated also. One minute is exactly how long it will take for both of us to say goodbye, if there are no interruptions and if we speak in exactly the same speed as we do in normal cases."

"Well, since you already know what I want to say to you and _I_ already know what _you_ want to say to me—"

"—then we can save the trouble of making those embarrassing and sappy speeches."

Yanagi smiled gently.

"—the possibility of you saying so is 100 percent."

--

"There's only one minute left," Kawamura informed the others who were stuck in the house like him. He had no watch, but there were clocks in the house and Kawamura assumed that they were reliable.

"Good. I can finish watching this episode of _CSI: Miami_." Marui grinned, eyes glued to the television. "Look, guys, just how many pairs of sunglasses do this guy Horatio have?"

"This is not the time to watch CSI," Yuuta cried in frustration.

"One minute, isn't it? It's quite enough," Fuji (not Yuuta, the older one) murmured thoughtfully. There was something in his voice that was so creepy that everyone had to turn to him.

"Enough for what?"

Fuji did not really need to answer. All he did was pick up one of his machine guns and everyone immediately understood what he wanted to do.

"Aniki! What do you think you're doing? Put it down!" Yuuta screamed in horror, even though he knew deep down inside that whoever Fuji chose to fire at, it probably wouldn't be him.

Marui, meanwhile, knew that it could very well be him. I mean, all those Seigaku people and him the only Rikkai Dai person, there was practically no reason why it shouldn't be him. Unless Fuji harbored some sort of secret hatred for Kurobane Harukaze.

He started saying goodbye to his family and friends in his head. He hoped that there would be candy and cake in heaven or hell, wherever he would be going.

The others were saying quick last goodbyes to their family and friends as well because though Marui did seem a very likely candidate, they could never be sure what Fuji was thinking.

"Remember to feed the stray tabby that lives beside our house for me," Kaidoh thought, hoping his brother would somehow hear.

"Oishi, let's play doubles together in heaven," Eiji thought, never considering for once that they might both land in hell.

"If I die, I may not get to eat any more burgers," Momo lamented.

"Finally, no more Davide and bad puns!" Bane thought with relief.

"Daddy, Mommy—" Yuuta was thinking, when his thoughts were abruptly brought to a stop by a sudden demand.

"Kill me, Fuji, with your gun."

They all spun around and gaped at Kawamura.

**Hour 9**

**40 contestants remaining**

* * *

TBC. Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome.

To loove it!!: Thanks for the review :D I suppose Ryuuzaki-sensei must have been pregnant before some time in her life (since Sakuno is her granddaughter after all) but it's really hard to imagine xD

To kalista jia: Thanks for the review:D I hope you do well on your exam!


	20. Chapter 20

Even Fuji had to stare at Kawamura in shock. His eyes actually opened for once.

"But Taka-san—" Fuji began, looking flabbergasted for the first time in his life.

"Come on, there isn't much time left. I'll die anyway, better just me than all of us," Kawamura bravely urged, eyeing the clock on the wall nervously.

"But—" Fuji had not even finished his sentence before Coach Ryuuzaki's voice blared over the loudspeakers.

"Hello, everyone. Your three-hour limit is up. Fortunately for you, someone has already died, so your collars will remain intact for now, at least. Keep in mind that this rule still applies to the next three hours. If no one dies in the next three hours, everyone's collar will explode. Understood? Good. Good-bye and happy killing then!" Her voice faded away while the puzzled contestants were still trying to get over the shock.

"Huh? So someone's already dead?" Fuji muttered, slowly putting down his machine gun. "Who?"

Momo finally registered the question and responded on cue by yelling "Wait, Coach, you didn't say who it was! Aren't you supposed to tell us who it was?"

"Ah, I forgot," Coach Ryuuzaki spoke apologetically. "Ten minutes ago, Yukimura Seiichi from Rikkai Dai died."

The contestants were even more shocked than they already were. It took them a few moments to realize that Coach Ryuuzaki was not joking.

"No way," Momo shouted, waving his arms frantically. "Yukimura was one of the few I actually thought could win this game. How can he get killed so quickly?"

"Buchou? It's impossible—they couldn't have killed buchou," Marui muttered, still in shock. Genius as he was he could never have guessed that his captain would be the first to go.

"Maybe his weapon betrayed him," Fuji suggested with a frown.

"Can't be, our fukubuchou would never do that," Marui retorted.

"Just what happened exactly?" Kawamura wondered.

--

What happened was this:

Yukimura was walking happily in the meadow with Sanada, Shishido, Ootori and the golden Sanada. All in a sudden, he felt faint and coughed up blood. Then he died.

"Seiichi!" Sanada yelled into the sky.

"Wait, that simple? He died just like that?" Even Shishido, who was actually present at the scene of death, still could not believe his eyes.

"Yes, just like that—" gentle Yukimura kindly sat up to explain to Shishido, but he remembered that he was dead and quickly fell back to the ground.

"Seiichi!" Sanada went on yelling to the sky.

--

Rikkai are a loyal people. The devastating news sent them all yelling into the sky like their vice captain.

"Seiichi!" Sanada yelled into the sky.

"Seiichi—I mean, buchou!" Kirihara yelled into the sky. He was still stuck on the helicopter because neither Carlos nor Parker could manage to get his collar off for him. The helicopter was flying around in circles above the island because the pilots dared not bring Kirihara out of the island range and could not land either for fear that they would be attacked by students again, even though Kirihara told them repeatedly that it would not happen.

"Buchou!" Marui yelled into the sky, flinging the remote control out of his hands and into the air. The heartless Seigaku people started to fight over it.

"Buchou!" Yanagi, despite all his data, could never calculate that such an event would occur. He also yelled into the sky.

"Buchou!" Niou and Yagyuu both yelled into the sky. They wanted to keep their cool and composed image, so they dressed up as each other before they started the yelling, as if it would do them any good.

"Buchou!" Jackal yelled into the sky, and fell into a hole that Gakuto dug.

"Oh dear, I'm sorry," Gakuto exclaimed, looking down into the deep hole. He was worried that Jackal would hurt his head (he didn't even have hair to cushion his fall) and was about to leap down to check when Jackal waved up at him.

"I'm fine," he told Gakuto. "And look, this little yellow light on my collar doesn't work anymore."

--

"This can't be. Seiichi can't be dead," Sanada cried, weeping on Yukimura's corpse. Shishido and Ootori could do nothing except kneel beside him and pat him on the back comfortingly. Or we should say that Ootori knelt beside Sanada and Shishido stood, because Sanada was too tall for him to pat on the back.

"And now, with Yukimura Seiichi eliminated, there are only thirty-nine contestants left," Coach Ryuuzaki announced over the broadcast.

Kawamura sighed wistfully. "There had been forty in the past announcements, and now only thirty-nine are left. It's a bit sad." He casted a worried look at the bathroom where Marui had just disappeared into. He was a sympathetic person and could understand Marui's feelings over the loss of his captain.

"Weird. There are forty-one names on my list, so shouldn't there be forty people left instead?" Fuji muttered, showing the others his list of all the contestants' weapons. There were indeed forty-one names on it.

"This means that someone whose name is on the list is not present on the island," Momo concluded slowly. "But who? I'm the last to leave in Seigaku, and I'm pretty sure I saw all the regulars plus Horio. We can't be missing anyone, so it must be someone from another school."

"I don't think it can be one of Seigaku. I mean, five of us are right here, and I know I've seen all the others back there in the base," Kawamura agreed.

"Can't be anyone from St. Rudolph either," Yuuta asserted, studying the list. "The only ones listed here are me, Mizuki, Yanagisawa and Kisarazu, and I've spoken to everyone of them at the base."

"Might be someone from Rikkai," Momo suggested. He went to the bathroom to question Marui about it. Marui was hiding in the bathroom not because he needed to lament the loss of his captain but because he really needed to use the toilet, and screamed at Momo for violating his privacy.

"Might be one of them." Momo shrugged and came back to sit down on the sofa. "There are so many of them that I can't keep track of them all. Yamabuki and Fudoumine should be easier because they have fewer contestants."

"Wait," Bane suddenly spoke up. "I think it's one of us. You see, there are five Rokkaku people listed up here, and yet that there were only four of us at the base. I am pretty sure of it because we were talking about how four was the ideal number to play cards. But—who is missing?"

"How should we know if even you don't?" The others threw stuff at him.

"Well, can't be me, because I'm right here." Bane counted on his fingers. "Can't be Davide, I would definitely notice if he were missing because he's so annoying."

"We all saw Aoi," Eiji added. "He was the first to leave the classroom."

"I remember seeing Kisarazu, so it must be Saeki that's missing," Bane concluded. "I wonder where he went."

"How should we know if you don't?" The others threw stuff at him again. Even Marui joined in.

--

We know that Saeki was not missing. He was right there digging holes with the group that consisted of too many Hyoutei people.

The real problem was Kisarazu Ryou had been in the toilet when the soldiers came to Rokkaku to abduct them. When he came back out to the courts after a whole hour of constipation the courts were empty. He wondered where everybody was.

The soldiers abducted Kisarazu Atsushi twice and made him walk out of the base twice to make up for the loss.

Poor Saeki was not missing, yet Bane was quite convinced that he was. No wonder Saeki sometimes felt sad that even though he was good-looking and a reasonably good tennis player, he still had a freshman for a captain and was often forgotten by people.

Therefore, there were now only thirty-nine contestants left on the island. Or we should say thirty-eight, for Kirihara was suspended somewhere in the air. He was still in the game, though.

**Hour 9**

**39 contestants remaining **

* * *

TBC. Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome.

To kalista jia: Thanks for the review :D Exam week? Good luck :( I'm very sorry about Yukimura.

To loove it!!: Thanks for the review:D Neither do I (want to see a pregnant 70-year-old in a lilac track suit, I mean)… that would be quite disgusting.

To s-a-w: Thanks for the review:D I hope your house is all right now:(

To shourin: Thanks for the review:D That comment about Tezuka being bumped out to third is hilarious xD Akaya's my favorite in Rikkai:D

To -: Thanks for the review:D Yes, she can be adopted, or maybe her dad was adopted… it's indeed hard to imagine these two being related :D


	21. Chapter 21

"The light on your collar has stopped working, you said?" Inui asked Jackal, leaning down upon the deep hole Jackal was stuck in to get a better look. Gakuto, who was standing behind Inui, contemplated shoving Inui down the hole—it would be easy, just a simple little push would do—but finally decided not to because Jackal kept looking at him with pleading puppy eyes that said "no, please no, I don't want to be stuck in a hole with_ that _guy."

"There was a yellow light right here," Jackal explained to Inui while keeping an eye on Gakuto, "but now it's gone. You see?"

Mizuki, who was also looking into the hole curiously, theorized, "So this might mean that if we go deep enough and the people at the base are unable to detect our pulse or something, the collars will just stop working altogether."

"Do you mean that I can just take this collar off and go home?" Jackal looked up with hope in his eyes. He could probably take off the collar single-handedly. He was strong, after all, and had four lungs. At least that was what people said.

"Don't try it just yet," Inui quickly stopped him. "We don't know if Mizuki was right. If you broke your light in the course of your fall, your collar should still be working and your egg-shaped head will explode as soon as you try to do anything to the collar."

"You could have left the word 'egg-shaped' out," Jackal muttered dismally.

"So what should we do to make sure then?" Gakuto cried, dancing around because he was bored and this was an exciting discovery.

"We shall experiment. Mukahi-san, please jump into the neighboring hole. That one should resemble Jackal's hole in moisture levels and mineral contents, only it's deeper. It should provide a nice control group to see if depth has anything to do with the lights on the collars," Yanagi suggested.

"This one?" Gakuto peeked into the hole next to Jackal's. "Seems very deep. I'll try." He then nimbly leaped down and disappeared.

"It _is_ very deep. We can't even see you now. Are you all right?" Inui peeked down into the hole too.

"I landed safely," Gakuto reported. "My light's still on though."

"Now this is quite tricky," Yanagi murmured. "Perhaps the way different collars are designed may also affect the outcome. We may have to do experiments on the same collar. Mukahi-san, why don't you try another—"

"Can't," Gakuto yelled upwards, "I can't jump that high, so I'm stuck in here. Sorry, you will have to find someone else to experiment with unless someone can fish me out."

No one tried to fish Gakuto out. They either weren't able to or just frankly didn't care. Oshitari kindly threw some comic books down into the hole so Gakuto could wile away the time.

"Let's try this other hole here," Yanagi decided. "Who wants to go down there?"

"Me! Me! Me!" Aoi Kentaro from Rokkaku shouted and jumped in before the others could say anything. They all waited around the hole for his reply.

"Nope, my little red light is not on anymore," Aoi told them.

"Wait—his light is red, and Jackal's is yellow. Perhaps the collars of the members of each school differ in design," Inui calculated. "So we'll need another Rokkaku person, another Hyoutei person, and another one from Rikkai to use as control groups."

So the experiments began. They involved a lot of ordering on Yanagi and Inui's part and a lot of jumping in holes on everyone else's. Soon almost all the people present were stuck somewhere underground.

Oshitari, of course, was too smart to be one of them. He preferred to stay calmly under the tree and watch the others make fools of themselves. Oishi also stayed by the tree, his stomachache too severe for him to go jumping about.

"The time for the danger zones to take effect has already passed, so anyone who is not in these nine sections should be dead already," Oshitari speculated to Oishi since he was the only one listening.

"But if people died, shouldn't there be a broadcast?" Oishi wondered. He was rather worried, because he just _knew_ his teammates (with the exception of Inui, who was right in front of him) would not take good care of themselves without him, the Mother of Seigaku, to fuss over them and would all die tragic deaths. He also thought that Oshitari was very sexy and standing beside him made Oishi even more nervous.

"I believe that everyone must have made it into the safe sections," Oshitari said kindly, "so though we haven't seen anyone yet, they should surely turn up in—Ah look, we've got company."

Oishi turned his eyes away from sexy Oshitari and saw three guys in black approaching. He recognized them as the Fudoumine people.

"Good, you guys are still alive," Oishi exclaimed to Tachibana. To Oishi, the Fudoumine students were the kind of people who were bound to get into all kinds of accidents, and he had always been secretly worried about them.

"Good, we need Fudoumine data," Inui remarked happily on sight of them.

"Hi guys," Kamio cried cheerfully, waving. Not knowing that holes were everywhere, he did not check his steps and stumbled into a hole, dragging Ibu Shinji down with him because his hand was connected to Shinji's collar. It happened so quickly that neither Oishi nor Tachibana could do anything to help or warn them.

"Kamio-kun, this isn't quite nice, you know. You should have known that since you are connected to me you should walk carefully, because if you fall I have to fall as well. I have always been very careful, so it's unfair that I should be brought into such a mess all because of your carelessness. Well, Kamio-kun, this is quite a deep hole, you know. How do you reckon we can get out of here? We probably can't climb, what with your hand connected to my collar and everything. Hey, Kamio-kun, have you heard of that story in which a group of kids lost their beach ball in a hole and they poured water into the hole and the ball floated up to the surface and they got their ball back? Do you think we can do that too?"

"We don't have that much water," Oshitari pointed out.

"Yes, he's right. We don't have that much water, and we are not beach balls anyway, Kamio-kun. So Kamio-kun, how should we get out of here? Why don't you try coming up with an idea too? Hey, Kamio-kun? Kamio-kun?"

"What's wrong?" Tachibana asked concernedly.

"Kamio-kun must have fainted," Shinji concluded. "He must have hit his head in the fall. I'm sitting on him, so am not hurt at all."

"Ibu, does the light on your collar still work?" Inui the realist asked. The collar-light was all he thought about. He couldn't care less about Kamio's injuries.

"It's still on. A nice silvery light. But Kamio-kun's doesn't work anymore," Shinji answered.

"You mean that he's dead?!" Tachibana screamed in horror.

"He's still breathing, don't worry," Shinji assured him. Tachibana sighed in relief when Yanagi explained to him the experiments they were doing with the collars and that malfunctioning lights did not necessarily mean death. After finishing his explanation Yanagi went back to continue with his experimenting because he didn't care whether Kamio was dead or not. Tachibana kindly stayed by the hole to chat so Shinji wouldn't feel lonely.

"We need another sample from Rikkai," Yanagi speculated, "but I'm definitely not going into one of those holes."

"We need at least two samples from Seigaku also, but I'm not going down there either," Inui agreed. "We will need the Yamabuki people too, but we don't have any of them around now."

"So just how many—" Yanagi started when voices came from inside the forest.

"Hey Fudoumine people, wait up a bit. We're tired," Sengoku from Yamabuki called out as he emerged from the trees.

"I don't get why they have to walk so fast," Ryoma muttered. He appeared after Sengoku.

"They probably hike a lot," Niou suggested. He appeared after Ryoma. "Hi, Renji, I wasn't expecting to find you here."

Inui and Yanagi watched the remaining people from SWAT heading towards them and malicious glints appeared in their eyes. None of the others saw the glints though, because both of them had weird eye structure.

"Excellent. Now we can get ample data."

**Hour 10**

**39 contestants remaining**

* * *

To loove it!!: Thanks for the review:D No, he's dead. He's not going to be revived xD

To Drive B for Bazooka: Thanks for the review:D I'm glad you liked it. Yukimura's really dead though. xD

To I KNOW WHO's MISSING: Thanks for the review:D The people at the base knows that he's there though, so he's not missing xD

To kalista jia: I'm very sorry:( I know you wouldn't like that to happen…your reaction was hilarious though xD Thanks for the review!


	22. Chapter 22

After almost an hour of patient walking, the Silver Pair and the two Sanadas finally reached the grounds full of holes where most of the others were accumulated. Sanada carried Yukimura, who was dead and therefore couldn't walk on his own, on his back.

"What are you guys doing?" Shishido wondered as he eyed the strange holey scene in front of him with a raised eyebrow. He had always knew that his Hyoutei friends were somewhat weird, but this was more than _somewhat weird_.

"Maybe they are burying landmines," Ootori suggested sensibly.

"No. We're experimenting," Inui explained, pushing up his glasses. Now that SWAT, also known as the People with Clothes, had arrived, he was at last reunited with his precious glasses.

"What kind of experiment?" Sanada, who was still carrying Yukimura, asked, and Yanagi began outlining their theories and calculations to him.

"So, uh, your experiments are based on the assumption that the lights stop shining when someone dies, right?" Ootori queried cautiously.

"Yes. We are assuming that with the lights off, we will be able to take off the collars without triggering explosions," Inui told him.

"But, um, senpai," the ever-polite Ootori began, scratching his head, "your assumption wasn't true to begin with. See, Yukimura-san is dead, but the light on his collar is still on." He pointed at Yukimura to emphasize his point. Indeed, the tiny speck of yellow light was still shining happily on his collar.

Everyone was speechless for a moment.

"What? Then what the heck were we jumping into holes for?" All the people stuck underground started complaining. Luckily for Inui and Yanagi, most of them had no way to come back up and therefore Inui and Yanagi needed not worry that the furious contestants would murder them.

"This means that we'll need new data," Inui concluded and sighed.

"And we'll need a new method to get off this island," Yanagi added, crestfallen.

Yagyuu chose this moment to offer his assistance. "Renji, I have a laptop here. Do you think you can do something to the collars with this?"

The others studied the pretty silver laptop with interest. They had not expected to see such a high-tech device on this island. At least not in one of their comrades' hands.

"That your weapon?" Yanagi questioned Yagyuu.

"Nope. I nabbed it when we stole the fried chicken," Yagyuu told him solemnly.

"Fried chicken? Where?" Everyone, including Yanagi and Inui, immediately forgot about the laptop and ran joyously towards Sengoku, who cheerfully unveiled his fried chicken. After all, most of them had been digging and had a right to feel hungry. Those who were stuck in holes begged for a share also, but the ones who were above the ground very inconsiderately devoured everything themselves.

Meanwhile, Shishido (self-crowned King of Pointless Little Games) and Ootori were kneeling on the floor playing Microsoft Windows Hearts on the laptop. They seemed to be having a good time until suddenly they both let out blood-curdling screams.

"What happened?" Tachibana demanded.

"This thing's gone out of battery," Ootori replied apologetically, standing up.

"Just when we were winning, too," Shishido complained as he stood up from his crouching position also.

"It's _what_?" Tachibana cried. "We took so much trouble attaining it and even lost Kirihara in the process, and now it's gone out of battery?

"You lost Akaya in the process?" Yanagi exclaimed in horror, suddenly noticing the absence of his seaweed-headed kouhai.

"Yes, we lost our dear sister Akaya," Yagyuu sobbed, wiping away a tear.

"Your dear _sister_ Akaya?" Tachibana commented in shock. "Now I know you're awfully sad about losing Kirihara, but crazy word choice like this is a bit—"

"Niou-kun, enough pretending to be me and saying out-of-character stuff," the real Yagyuu reprimanded.

While the Rikkai Doubles one pair was bickering at each other again, the others were talking over the laptop-battery problem worriedly. They did not worry over the loss of Kirihara Akaya, because they figured that since they hadn't heard any broadcast about his death, it probably meant that he was still alive and well somewhere.

"These sections are all trees and holes. Where can we find somewhere to plug this laptop?" Sengoku wondered aloud as he munched on his fried chicken. Even in such a life-or-death crisis, he still had the time and leisure to eat fried chicken.

"We passed a few houses on our way here," Tezuka volunteered. "Perhaps there might be electricity in them."

"Then we'll have to check them out," Inui concluded. "We shouldn't all go of course. Someone should stay around to watch over these people who are stuck in holes. I, naturally, don't want to stay. Hanging around a bunch of idiots in holes may get to be quite boring."

"And whose fault is it that we're in here?" Atobe yelled. The other hole-bound people, including Gakuto, Jackal, Aoi, Jiroh, Kabaji and Kisarazu Atsushi also yelled with him. Well, Kabiji didn't. Neither did Jiroh. He was quite contently curled up in his cozy little corner in the pit and did not have any problem with his current situation.

"Well, I'll stay then," Tachibana suggested kindly. He wanted to stay around his Fudoumine teammates. He was such a kind guy that we could almost be a hundred percent sure that he would be the first to be killed off if this were a normal Battle Royale. In fact, if this were a normal Battle Royale, he would probably stand up and refuse to play the game and be shot before the program even began.

"I'll stay too." Sengoku shrugged. He hadn't finished his fried chicken yet and wasn't willing to go anywhere before he did.

"Me too," Sanada said. He was too tired to walk anymore, having carried dead Yukimura for a long distance.

Therefore, after much debate, Inui, Tezuka and Ryoma from Seigaku, Yanagi from Rikkai, Saeki and Davide from Rokkaku, Mizuki from St. Rudoph, and Oshitari, Shishido and Ootori from Hyoutei formed a ten-person exploring group. Their mission was not only to find some place with electricity but also get the poor guys in the holes something to eat. Oishi also suggested that they should bring back firewood to cook the eagle Mizuki and Gakuto had killed with a comic book.

"Let's split into three groups," Inui instructed everyone, "one go to the houses, one look for food, and one get the firewood."

"I like this idea. But how do we decide the groups? Do we draw straws or something?" Shishido asked.

"Since we are still in a dangerous situation in which people are supposed to kill each other, I'd say it would be better if we simply look for those we trust to form groups," Inui decided.

"Makes sense," everyone said and started making groups with the people they trust. In the end, it was decided that Tezuka, Shishido and Davide would go hunting, Ryoma, Mizuki, Saeki and Ootori would search for a house with electricity, and Oshitari, Inui and Yanagi would look for firewood.

From aside, Oishi thought that everyone chose unlikely people to trust.

**Hour 11**

**39 contestants remaining**

* * *

TBC. Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome and appreciated.

To loove it!!: Thanks for the review:D No, it won't be that long. Everyone will get bored that way xD

To s-a-w: Thanks for the review:D I once had a guinea pig. It was a wonderful pet:)


	23. Chapter 23

"So we are going hunting," Tezuka announced solemnly, looking at the others with expectation. "The others" included only Shishido and Davide, but Tezuka still thought that he was very important as the leader of the trio.

"Yes, we are going hunting. But where?" Davide asked. Tezuka and Shishido began looking for things to throw at him but then realized that he was not making a pun and quickly stopped.

"When I was coming here with Choutaro and the Sanadas, I saw this sign that told us where we could hunt wild boars. Should we just follow it?" Shishido suggested.

"Good. Yudan sezu ni ikou," Tezuka declared, and the three headed happily towards the presumed location of the sign with high expectations of catching many boars.

They completely forgot that they had no weapons to catch the boars with. Tezuka's map could not kill even an ant, Davide had lent his bra to Niou and never thought of asking him to give it back, and Shishido's small wooden kendama couldn't quite serve as a weapon either.

--

On the other hand, Oshitari, Inui and Yanagi were looking for firewood.

"Frankly, I do not feel like doing something that does not require my brains and data. I am too smart for mindless things like gathering firewood," Inui confessed and pushed up his glasses.

"Neither do I," Oshitari agreed and pushed up his glasses.

"Nor I," Yanagi said and pushed up his glasses too—no wait, he doesn't have glasses. It would be wrong to assume that all smart people wore glasses.

"Then let's just not do it," Inui decided. "Discussing Rubik's cubes will be more lucrative."

"True." Oshitari looked around for a comfortable place to sit because standing was so tiring for brainy people.

"Good." Yanagi patted the ground before settling down. "So, on average, how many seconds does it take you to finish—"

So the three irresponsible people quit looking for firewood and started chatting. The moral of the story is that you should trust one stupid person to finish a job rather than three smart ones.

--

Meanwhile, Ryoma, Ootori, Mizuki and Saeki were looking for places with electricity. It did not take them long to find a trail of bubblegum on the ground and follow it to discover a bunch of houses.

"Marui, the genius from Rikkai, must be inside," Mizuki theorized. "He must have left this trail in hopes of informing his teammates of his current situation. Of course, it might be a trap. You can never trust those weird Rikkai people."

He then quickly surveyed his companions and was relieved to discover that there were no Rikkai people in the group.

"Well, if it _is_ a trap, what should we do about it? We have no fighting chance with our crappy weapons," Ootori said worriedly.

It was true. Saeki had a stupid ping-pong ball, Ootori a bag of straws, and Ryoma a bazooka (that he had already thrown away somewhere because it was too heavy to carry). Mizuki's treasured tissues were already used up by all the people who wanted to wipe their hands after eating fried chicken, and it wasn't like he could use them even if he still had them.

"There must be a way to beat him. We must not let that evil Marui from Rikkai ensnare us in his trap," Mizuki stated, baring his teeth.

"Why don't we just go to another house? There are so many of them," Ryoma pointed out and wondered why no one else had thought of it.

"You're right," the others all said, so they carefully circumnavigated the house that Marui might be in and aimed for another more peaceful-looking one behind it. But before they could go anywhere something sprang out and threw itself over Ryoma. The blur was as fast as a cat noticing that someone was opening its food tin.

"It's a jaguar," Mizuki yelled and pulled out a shotgun to save Ryoma's life, but he suddenly remembered that he did not have a shotgun. Luckily Ryoma's life did not matter that much to him either.

"Senpai, you're suffocating me," Ryoma complained. The others realized that the jaguar-thing was actually Kikumaru Eiji from Seigaku.

"That was a very dangerous action, Kikumaru," Mizuki reprimanded. "If I had a shotgun, I would have killed you then and there."

Eiji was not listening to him. He was so happy over having discovered Ryoma that he was rolling all over him, again reminding everyone of a cat that had heard its master open a food tin. (I often wonder if cats wish that they had fingers too when they watch us open cat food tins.)

"Ochibi, long time no see! And you are still so short," Eiji shouted, still rolling around on Ryoma.

"It's only been a few hours, senpai." Ryoma sighed. "I can't become tall in a matter of a few hours."

"Ah, you guys are… Ootori from Hyoutei, Saeki from Rokkaku and Mizuki from St. Rudolph, right?" Kawamura, who had appeared behind Eiji, asked.

"Right. How are you doing, senpai?" Ootori exclaimed happily, and came to an abrupt stop when he saw Fuji materialize behind Kawamura. Holding a machine gun. Fortunately, it was not pointing at him.

Mizuki, meanwhile, was not feeling at all fortunate, because the machine gun was pointed at _him_.

"Hello, Mizuki," Fuji greeted him with one of his I'm-an-angel! smiles.

Mizuki took one step backwards. Then he saw a familiar face and quickly threw himself at the owner's mercy.

"Yuuta-kun, your brother's trying to kill me," he cried, trying to look pathetic.

Yuuta sighed. "Aniki, please put the gun down."

Fuji glared at Mizuki and slowly put the gun down.

"Wow, you have such great weapons." Ootori admired the shiny machine gun in Fuji's hands. "All we have are a ping-pong ball, straws and tissues. Wait, we don't even have the tissues anymore."

"What about that? Whose weapon is that?" Momo, who had also abandoned the television to join in the fun, pointed at the laptop Ootori was holding. Right now the whole house had come out to meet their visitors, with the exception of Marui, who was still watching TV. It was because of television that he had become a genius, so remember that when you become parents in the future, _don't_ stop your kids from watching TV.

"This doesn't belong to any of us," Ootori explained regretfully. "Actually this is why we came. We need some place with electricity so we can use this thing."

"Electricity? Sure we have electricity. We've been watching TV for_ever_. Come in, make yourselves at home," Momo invited and threw the door open, as if the house were his.

"But what are you going to do with this laptop? We can't get in contact with the police or anyone without the Internet," Eiji pointed out.

"Actually it's because we want to win this game of Microsoft Windows Hearts so badly—no, it's because some senpai suggested that we could mess with the collar-programming with the computer," Ootori replied truthfully.

"Programming? Now that's cool. I don't know anything about that," Eiji exclaimed admiringly.

"Actually, neither do I," Ootori admitted, looking ashamed.

"Nor I," Saeki added.

"I don't do programming." Ryoma smirked. His life consisted of nothing except tennis, cats and Ponta.

"Neither do—wait, why are _we _looking for electricity?" Mizuki cried out in frustration. "Shouldn't people like Inui and Yanagi be doing this?"

"Don't worry," Fuji piped up from aside with an angelic smile. "I have never tried before, but being a genius, I'm sure I can do something about it."

**Hour 11.5**

**39 contestants remaining**

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TBC. Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome.

To kalista jia: Thanks for the review:D I'm glad you like that scene xDD

To loove it!!: Thanks for the review:D Actually the groups are completely random:D That's why they are so unlikely...

To s-a-w: Thanks for the review:D He's not dead yet, don't worry.

To I thought I knew who's missing!: Thanks for the review:D Why Chuck Norris? xDDD I've already pointed out who's missing in a few chapters before though xD Sorry, I didn't make it clear enough...:(


	24. Chapter 24

_The twelve people who were now happily situated in the house with the television (i.e. the Watch Television Till We Die group plus Ryoma, Ootori, Mizuki and Saeki) were chatting and eating pistachios. Then Ootori Choutaro, rich and pampered, suddenly yelled, "Wah, it's so hot! We must turn on the air conditioner, now! Turn it on! Turn it on! If you don't let me turn it on, I'll cut my wrists! Waaaaaah!" The spoiled brat rolled around on the floor and threw a tantrum. _

"_Cut your wrists then. Like I care." Fuji Yuuta scoffed. He got angry and threw some chess pieces on the floor. "You know, in our dazzling new century, passion doesn't matter that much any more."_

"_Let's just turn on the air conditioner, Yuuta," Fuji Syusuke said and painted all the walls black. He put a little yellow helmet on his head to ensure his safety._

"_Yeah, let's just turn it on. Ootori here is getting on my nerves. I'll shut the windows," Marui Bunta offered. He hurt his fingers when he was closing one of the windows and began to cry. "Aaahhh! It hurts so! I'm not playing with you anymore! I hate bubblegum! Echizen is the tallest of us all, Kabaji the smallest, Jackal has the most hair, and Atobe doesn't like to call himself ore-sama!"_

"_You hurt your hand?" Kaidoh Kaoru asked in concern. "You should've been more careful, sweetheart. Come over, I'll kiss your wounds and you'll be fine in a minute." He picked up Marui's lily-like hand and kissed it._

"_Now that all the windows are shut, I'll turn on the air conditioner," Kikumaru Eiji whispered shyly and turned on the air conditioner with his eyes on the ground and blushing furiously. Everyone sat down to enjoy the air conditioner, except Kawamura Takashi, who was break dancing on the floor in slacks. Everyone else sang along, clapped their hands and whistled for him. The song they were singing was the newest hit single from Hiyoshi Wakashi's debut album—Gekokujou. That album sold so well that it made it to the top of the charts. It was even more famous than the NEWS and SMAP CDs. That was why everyone knew the lyrics._

"_Do you guys smell anything? Mamma-mia!" Mizuki Hajime cried and sent everyone air-kisses. He took off all his clothes._

"_True. One of you must be wearing stinky underwear!" Saeki Kojiro shouted and banged his fist on the table. "Which one of you is it?"_

"_Actually, it's me," Echizen Ryoma admitted, his face as red as a tomato._

_All in a sudden, they realized that the smell was not Echizen's underwear but some kind of poisonous gas. Since all the windows were shut, all twelve of them soon died one by one._

_**Hour 11.5**_

_**27 contestants remaining**_

_This was what really happened. Hiyoshi Wakashi (14), strong, brilliant and perfect in every aspect, had used his insect incense repellent to kill all the people in the air-conditioned house. How smart Hiyoshi was! With this accomplished, he was even closer to becoming the new captain of Hyoutei!_

Before everyone starts yelling "What's with all this OOCness?" and gives up this fic for good, I must inform you that all the above happened only in the imagination of Hiyoshi Wakashi and did not really occur. Hiyoshi naively believed that if his insect repellent could kill insects, there was no reason why it couldn't harm humans, and so he silently selected a house that seemed to be inhabited by quite a lot of people to carry out his murder plans. He gathered that there were twelve people in the house, and with these twelve gone, he would be a step closer to becoming the champion of this Battle Royale. Hiyoshi was rarely noticed by anyone, and therefore even though he had been circling the house for some time, nobody realized that he was there.

He was ready to put his plan into action. The only problem was that he had no idea how to make the people in the house follow his script and turn on the air conditioner. They probably weren't feeling hot enough to do so.

Hiyoshi remembered a story that his mother once told him about the north wind and the sun. The north wind blew madly at the traveler, but only succeeded to make the traveler wrap his jacket tighter around himself. The sun shone gently over the traveler, making the traveler feel warm, and finally he took off his jacket and went in a house to turn on the air-conditioner.

"But I'm not the sun," Hiyoshi muttered distractedly and scratched his head. He continued to walk around the house in circles.

--

The people in the house had no intention of turning on the air-conditioner. They didn't even have one in the house, so they couldn't have turned it on even if they wanted to.

Therefore, while Fuji was puzzling over the laptop, the others were scattered about, feeling bored. There was only one television, which was currently occupied by Momo, who beat Marui in a rock-paper-scissors match.

"I'm bored," Eiji complained, turning to Saeki. "What are you doing?"

"Welcome to Saeki's blowgun classroom, on air every Monday and Wednesday!" Saeki announced in a tone reminiscent of a TV commercial. He was blowing a small ball of paper through one of Ootori's straws.

"And I thought you looked normal—" Mizuki began in disgust when he realized that the others were quite ecstatic over this new form of entertainment.

"Teach me how, please? I want to shoot paper balls at people," Eiji cried, scrambling over to Saeki's side.

"I want to learn too," Momo yelled, giving up his place at the television. Marui immediately took over.

"Finally, someone found my straws useful," Ootori sobbed in happiness.

Mizuki felt that, again, he was the only normal person on the island.

--

Hiyoshi was not the only one on the island who was actually thinking of killing somebody. Akutsu Jin was also making plans.

He knew that his weapon was no good (it being a bag of lettuce seeds, which he had already planted), but when it came to sheer strength he was second to none. He believed that taking action would be much better than sitting and waiting.

Akutsu also knew that if he died, he would not be able to protect _him_ anymore.

He turned, looking at the young, pale face of the smaller boy who was sleeping by a tree. Dan Taiichi should have known that Akutsu was not a safe person to be around with, and yet there he was, sleeping as if completely convinced that Akutsu would not do him any harm. This kind of unconditional trust was new to Akutsu. Usually people ran and hid behind trees as soon as they saw him.

"Sleep well," Akutsu murmured, gently moving Dan's headband so that it would not fall over his eyes. He took a few steps back and stared affectionately at the boy's sleeping form.

Then he turned and strode away. Now that he had decided to start killing, he could not bring Dan with him. He did not want Dan to see him murder people.

The noon sun shone on his silver hair, making it even whiter. It did not make him seem old. In fact, Akutsu had never looked more gorgeous. A man with ambition was always attractive. It was true even in Akutsu's case.

**Hour 11.5**

**39 contestants remaining**

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TBC. Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome.

To -: Thanks for the review:D I'm glad you liked it. I know, they should have been a bit stronger than that…

To kalista jia: Thanks for the review:D Sorry for the future lack of Sanayuki moments:(

To loove it!!: Thanks for the review:D I'm glad you got cracked up xD


	25. Chapter 25

The new three-hour limit that Coach Ryuuzaki had enforced was soon going to be up. If no one had died yet then, all the collars would explode.

The people who were playing with blowguns in the house knew this. Naturally, they were worried.

"Fuji," Kawamura began slowly, looking questioningly at his friend, who seemed to be enjoying himself with the laptop. "Have you worked out anything yet?"

"Of course," Fuji replied gaily.

"Good. So what have you discovered?" Saeki asked, fiddling with his blowgun. He was quite an expert at it. However the others tried, they could not shoot their paper balls as far as Saeki could.

"I've already begun the third round," Fuji told him happily. He had actually been playing Spider Solitaire the whole time.

"Fuji!" Kawamura yelled in horror.

"Aniki!" Yuuta yelled in horror.

"Fuji-senpai!" Ryoma yelled in horror.

"Why are you guys all yelling my name?" Fuji asked rather innocently.

"Because you're playing Spider Solitaire while you could have done something much more useful." Yuuta sighed. "Echizen, you yelled for the same reason, didn't you?"

"Actually I yelled because I saw a jaguar walk past our window and wanted to ask Fuji-senpai if he could shoot it. It's gone now, though," Ryoma explained regretfully.

"Are you insane, Echizen? There can't be any jaguars here," Momo pointed out as he practiced with his blowgun.

"You can't blame Echizen, you know," Bane mused. "In such a life-and-death situation, it is hard not to go crazy. Seeing things that aren't there may be a sign of breaking down. Luckily I'm still sane though. Hey guys, look, there's a frozen lake out there. Let's all go play hockey."

"And you are calling _me_ crazy," Ryoma muttered, smirking. "There really was a jaguar. I saw it with my own eyes."

"But ochibi, it _is _a bit far-fetched," Eiji pointed out.

"This is not the right time to think about jaguars," Yuuta insisted from aside. "Our collars will explode in ten minutes if no one dies. Isn't this much more important than jaguars?"

"Don't worry, Yuuta. I have guns, and we have this Mi—uh, Misaki? No, that's a girl's name. Wait, I think I got it. Mikoto, isn't it? We have this Mikoto guy here, so I can just shoot him and we'll be perfectly fine."

"Hey," Mizuki cried, "that's not fair."

"Guys, look, that jaguar—" Ryoma shouted, pointing at the window.

"That is not the point! Forget the jaguar!" Yuuta screamed, almost in hysterics. He wondered why everyone looked as if they didn't care about dying in the next ten minutes.

At this precise moment, Coach Ryuuzaki's drawling voice came blaring over the loudspeakers.

"Hello, everyone. Someone has just died, so you get another three hours. Isn't that grand? Continue your killing, and better pick up your pace, or you'll all be dead soon! Bye-bye!"

"Bye-bye," Eiji replied, waving. Yuuta looked at the happy senpai in disbelief and buried his face in his hands.

"_Who_ died? Shouldn't you be telling us already?" Momo shouted in the direction of the loudspeakers, hoping that Coach Ryuuzaki would hear him.

"Oops, I forgot to announce the name of the dead again. Must be getting old," Coach Ryuuzaki muttered. "Okay, it was Akutagawa Jiroh from Hyoutei who died. Bye-bye!"

"Bye-bye," Eiji replied again, waving.

"What? Akutagawa-senpai? But—why?" Ootori, the only Hyoutei member at hand, cried in surprise. "Senpai is harmless. Who would ever want to kill Akutagawa-senpai?"

"It _is_ weird," Momo agreed. "Who would want to kill someone who does nothing but sleep?"

Since even people who were not around Jiroh felt weird about his death, we could infer that the people who were actually around Jiroh felt _very_ weird about his death.

"This can't be. For Jiroh to die, someone has to kill him. But he had been in his hole for the whole time, and no one entered his hole either. How can anyone kill him this way?" Oishi cried, puzzled. He had been sitting somewhere near Jiroh's hole and could testify that no one had entered or exited it.

"It's like a murder committed in a locked room," Sengoku exclaimed excitedly.

"Ah, so it's a locked-room murder." Oishi and Tachibana nodded.

"Maybe someone dug their way to his hole and murdered him in his sleep. Then the murderer left through the tunnel he dug," Niou suggested.

"Makes sense." Oishi and Tachibana nodded.

"Perhaps Jiroh had a heart attack and died," Yagyuu theorized.

"Might be." Oishi and Tachibana nodded.

"The best thing to do now will be to go to his hole and check," Sanada stated solemnly.

"You're right." Oishi and Tachibana nodded.

So they all went to Jiroh's hole to check, circumnavigating other various troublesome holes as they went. Jiroh's hole was easy to find, for it was star-shaped. He wanted his hole to stand out when he was digging it.

"Jiroh, can you hear me?" Tachibana called downwards, feeling like an idiot.

No one answered.

"It doesn't seem like anyone else is inside. There is no trace of someone having dug their way here either," Oishi observed.

"Good. This means that he had really had a heart attack and died," Yagyuu said, satisfied.

"Ah, so it's a heart attack. Nice," everyone said and went back to their respective places. Oishi was trying to pull the feathers off Gakuto and Mizuki's eagle, Tachibana sat chatting with Shinji near his hole, Niou and Yagyuu were dressing up as each other, and Sanada was attempting to cut open his stomach with his samurai sword because life without Yukimura was just so unbearable. There were no Hyoutei people among them, which was why they cared very little about Jiroh's death.

As for the Hyoutei people, they all had different reactions to the news, unlike the Rikkai people who pretty much acted the same when they heard that their captain was dead.

"I can't believe it," gentle Ootori sobbed.

"I can't believe it," Shishido muttered, looking for boars.

Gakuto was reading comic books.

"Gekokujou. Ah, is that a jaguar? Must be something wrong with my eyes," Hiyoshi, still circling the house, murmured.

"So, you see, what do you do if this whole side is red and this one is green and this one is—" Oshitari pondered, drawing a Rubik's cube on the ground with a stick.

"What? Why did ore-sama's teammate die? Why, Kabaji?" Atobe demanded in his hole.

"Usu."

"—Wait, Kabaji, why are you in ore-sama's hole?"

It seemed that Kabaji, while stuck in his hole, had been digging around with his umbrella, and had arrived at Atobe's place.

"Good. Kabaji, now you're here ore-sama will not be lonely anymore," Atobe uttered his satisfaction.

"Usu."

Atobe didn't realize that he could just step on Kabaji and climb out of his hole. It wasn't a deep one to begin with.

**Hour 12**

**38 contestants remaining**

TBC. Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome.

To loove it!!: Thanks for the review:D Sorry about the confusion:(

To s-a-w: Thanks for the review:D That would have saved a lot of trouble. Killing twelve in one go...

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	26. Chapter 26

"Oh, no, we're running out of fuel," Carlos cried in concern.

"What should we do? I can't figure out what to do about his collar," Parker added fearfully.

In case you have forgotten, (it's understandable. Even _I_ don't remember them) Carlos and Parker were soldiers working for Coach Ryuuzaki. They were delivering Kentucky Fried Chicken by helicopter when they were hijacked by some students with a bazooka. Although they managed to fly away unscathed, a Kirihara Akaya was stuck on their helicopter by accident, and therefore they could not leave the island unless they found a way to remove Kirihara's collar. With the restriction of danger zones, all they could do now was hover above the central areas of the island and make vain attempts of breaking Kirihara's collar.

"We'll have to land then," Kirihara told Carlos and Parker. He was acting like he were the King of the Helicopter, even though he was the one with the collar and therefore the one in the most danger.

"But if we land, we might get attacked by contestants again," Carlos insisted, worried.

"That would be better than a helicopter crash," Kirihara pointed out.

"Well, yeah…" both Carlos and Parker agreed and started to land the helicopter. But it was too late. The helicopter had already run out of fuel and was freefalling to the ground at a frightening speed.

"What? Why? Shouldn't there be some kind of warning before we crash?" Parker exclaimed in shock.

"Yeah, why? Oh, wait, there was this weird beeping sound a few minutes ago. That must have been our warning," Carlos decided, proud of figuring it out. "I thought it was your wristwatch."

"I thought it was your water bottle," Parker said.

"Would a water bottle make beeping sounds? You're quite stupid, haha."

"Right, I'm quite stupid, haha."

Then the helicopter crashed. Parker and Carlos, joking around with each other even during the last minute of their lives, died blissfully in each other's arms. What a romantic way to die!

Kirihara, meanwhile, was alive and well. He had grabbed a parachute, jumped out of the helicopter with excellent timing and landed quite gracefully.

"Luckily my senpai-tachi have always told me that I should have a parachute handy whenever I am on a helicopter," he muttered as he looked with amusement at the burning remains of the vehicle and its two pilots.

Now you must be thinking, "Why would any normal senpai teach their kouhai such a thing?"

"It's a long story." Kirihara sighed in response. "After club practices, my senpai-tachi enjoy locking me up inside our locker room and giving hour-long lectures to me. Quite tiring, I think, but they are all older than me, so it's not like I can disobey them or anything."

--

Kirihara now had a flashback to a cool, breezy evening when he was sitting in the Rikkai locker room listening to his senpai-tachi's lectures.

"We shall teach Akaya the importance of parachutes today," Sanada announced after checking their Akaya-Lecture schedule book. "Akaya, if you ever get the chance to ride in a helicopter, the first thing you should do is to locate the parachute and keep it close. You don't need to worry about the seatbelt or the scenery outside, or even if the helicopter has fuel. All you need to care about is the parachute. Got it?"

"But fukubuchou, it's unlikely that I'll ever fly in a helicopter," Kirihara piped up, raising his hand. "Can you teach me some more, uh, _useful_ stuff?"

"Akaya, now you are being ignorant," Yanagi Renji reprimanded calmly. "We never know what might happen next, which is why I am always collecting data. I may need it for future use."

"Akaya, Genichiro and Renji are right. If you board a helicopter, you must keep a parachute near you," Yukimura began softly.

_If buchou said that, it must be right,_ Kirihara thought and quickly wrote it all down in his little red notebook.

"Well then, what are we going to lecture Akaya on next?" Marui asked, chewing bubblegum. "I've already tutored him on how to make the largest bubble ever with just one piece of bubblegum."

"Let's teach him about some important knowledge on how our characters were created," Jackal suggested. "Listen, Akaya. When Konomi Takeshi created me, he realized that he had used up all kinds of hairstyles and had none left for me. He was not creative enough to come up with a new one, so I got stuck without hair. You must remember this. This may be tested on the final exams."

"I see," Kirihara said, making notes like crazy.

"And now it's my turn," Yanagi put in. "When Konomi Takeshi created me, he had used up all kinds of different shapes and colors for eyes, and was not creative enough to think up other kinds of eyes, so I got stuck with my eyes always closed. This might appear in the final exams too."

"I see," Kirihara said, taking notes like crazy.

"And when Konomi Takeshi made Hiroshi and I," Niou informed him, "he ran out of personalities, and therefore made us pretend to be each other all the time. This may also appear in your exams."

"I see," Kirihara said, taking notes like crazy.

"Therefore Akaya," all the senpai recited in unison, "remember always to have a parachute near you when you go on a helicopter. Got it?"

"I see," Kirihara said, taking notes like crazy.

--

Now, Kirihara Akaya, alone with a parachute, was quite glad that he had taken all these notes and taken his senpai's advice.

"Luckily I attended all those lectures," he told himself and started walking towards where he believed his senpai-tachi might be located.

He was surprised to see a jaguar coming towards him.

"A jaguar! This must be somewhere _very_ far from Japan," he exclaimed. The jaguar had apparently noticed him and seemed ready to make an attack on its prey.

Kirihara quickly ran over all the past post- practice lectures in his head, but could not come up with anything related to jaguars. He decided that he had to use his instinct to fight instead of his brains.

"At least I have a weapon," he declared, and held up the fire extinguisher he had brought from the helicopter. He liked fire extinguishers. It was a handy thing to have around, and it was red.

He knew that as a Rikkai student, he must not run and hide from battles, not even battles with jaguars. His senpai had always told him to be proud, to strike first, rather than wait like a coward.

So he gave a brave war cry and charged towards the rather alarmed-looking jaguar and launched his attack. True, valiant Rikkai blood burned in his veins.

**Hour 12**

**38 contestants remaining**

TBC. Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome.

To kalista jia: Thanks for the review xD Yep, it's written for you xD And now that you mention it, that sentence IS a bit dirty xDD

To loove it!!: Thanks for the review xD It's because they are both nice people:D

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	27. Chapter 27

While Kirihara Akaya was battling with a jaguar, another exciting battle was going on in the forest.

Oshitari, Inui and Yanagi were having a lovely discussion involving Rubik's Cubes and how smart people always win in life when an intruder with a large head appeared from nowhere. His head looked big because he had white hair that was combed upwards, making him even taller than he already was.

Oshitari, Inui and Yanagi were smart people who got A+ in all their math exams, so they immediately realized that this intruder was different from all the other people they had ran into before. The others had no real intention of fighting or killing. This one definitely came to kill. Akutsu Jin, for he was the intruder, seemed to be surrounded by white flames, with murder written all over his face.

"Oh dear," Oshitari said. He had a glass wipe as a weapon, which could not be of much use against a fuming Akutsu.

"Oh no," Inui said. He had a black notebook as a weapon, which could not be of much use against a fuming Akutsu.

"It's three against one, though," Yanagi remarked, always the optimist. He had foil paper as a weapon. It couldn't be of much use against a fuming Akutsu either.

"You're right, there're three of us, and we're all tall," Inui agreed. "This way, we cannot lose."

"Don't you dare think that all people who wear glasses are wimps!" they declared, and stood up to fight Akutsu Jin. The war between Akutsu and the glasses-wearing people had officially begun.

"Wait. _I_'m not wearing glasses," Yanagi pointed out, but no one listened to him.

--

"Kabaji," Atobe began.

"Usu," Kanaji said.

"Kabaji, if you take the word 'use' and replace the 'e' with a 'u', what word do you get?"

"Usu."

"Good. Kabaji, if you take the word 'usurp', and remove the last two letters, what word do you get?"

"Usu."

"Excellent. Now, Kabaji, if you take the Japanese word 'uso' for 'lie', and then change the 'so' into 'su', what word do you get?"

"Usu."

"Perfect! Look, what a wonderful job ore-sama has done in educating Kabaji," Atobe exclaimed proudly to Kisarazu Atsushi, who was standing beside him with his mouth agape.

"Yeah, right," was all Atsushi could say.

"But wait, what are you doing in ore-sama's hole?"

"Your Kabaji dug a path to _my_ hole, and I followed him back here," Atsushi explained. Kabaji was making great progress in his digging. He had always dreamed of making a subway, and this was good practice. He planned on naming the tunnel he had already dug the Kabajiatobe line, and making Atsushi's hole Kisarazu station. Kisarazu station, with its convenient location, was to be made into a transfer spot. Kabaji thought it was ideal to build a string of boutique shops beside Kisarazu station and make some profit from them. We can see that Kabaji, though assumed to be stupid by most because he always kept silent, actually had a very organized, business-like mind.

Atobe also had an organized and business-like mind. He got it from his parents. After all, if his parents didn't have business-like minds, they wouldn't have become so insanely rich. Therefore, Atobe seized the opportunity to make money whenever he could.

"You, ignorant commoner," he demanded of Kisarazu Atsushi, "must pay ore-sama ten lira for entering ore-sama's grand underground realm."

"Come on, it's just a hole," Atsushi told him exasperatedly.

"It's not just a hole! It's ore-sama's grand underground realm!" Atobe insisted. "Right, Kabaji? Hey, Kabaji?" He realized that Kabaji was continuing his digging and had already gone out of sight. He decided to follow, and Atsushi, having nothing better to do, followed agreeably also.

Kabaji being big and strong, and everyone's holes being situated quite close, the three of them soon found themselves in Shinji's and Kamio's hole. It was to be named Ibukamio station.

Shinji was glad to see them. He liked to talk, and Kamio, being unconscious, was evidently not a good conversation partner.

"Hello," Shinji remarked to the newcomers with interest, "aren't you Kabaji-san from Hyoutei? You're quite tall, Kabaji-san. Ah, Atobe-san from Hyoutei and Kisarazu-san from Rokkaku! Be careful, don't step on Kamio-kun."

"I'm not from Rokkaku. I'm wearing a St. Rudolph uniform. Can't you see?" Atsushi cried desperately, exhibiting his St. Rudolph uniform (it belonged to Yanagisawa, but he didn't mind). "My brother's the one from Rokkaku."

"That is not the point," Atobe waved away Atsushi's complaints with one hand. "What is this tunnel for? Did you dig it?" He pointed at a deep, seemingly endless cave that yawned onwards from behind Shinji.

"It wasn't there a moment ago," Shinji answered. "Kabaji-san must have uncovered it." He tried to turn to look, but with an immobile Kamio stuck to him, it was difficult to move.

"I think something's written on the wall in this tunnel thing," Atsushi observed. He tried to make out the words but failed because it was too dark. Remembering how Saeki had previously made lights in seven colors appear on his collar by pressing a button that read _lumos_, he located the button on his own collar and did the same. The hole immediately lit up with rainbow-colored lights as if in a rock concert. Atobe thought that Atsushi had turned on the lights to glorify his awesome magnificence, and started making all kinds of ridiculous poses. Atsushi ignored him and carefully tried to read the words. Shinji turned around with much difficulty and tried to read them too.

Then they looked at each other.

"I don't understand it at all," Atsushi admitted.

"Neither do I. It looks like cuneiform characters to me. You know, the kind of writing system the Sumerians used," Shinji agreed.

"Atobe, can you read cuneiform?" Atsushi asked.

"Ore-sama does not read cuneiform. Ore-sama can, however, read Greek," Atobe said proudly.

"That's no good. We can't just go into this tunnel without knowing what these words mean." Atsushi sighed.

"It means _The Path on Which Majority Rules_," Kabaji stated.

Everyone's jaw dropped to the floor.

"Majority Rules?" Atobe asked on disbelief.

"Kabaji-san, you can talk?" Shinji asked in disbelief.

"Kabaji, you can read cuneiform?" Atsushi asked in disbelief.

"Of course Kabaji can read cuneiform," Atobe said scornfully. "Didn't ore-sama tell you that ore-sama has educated Kabaji well? And of course Kabaji can talk. His voice is as sexy as ore-sama's."

"Fine, whatever," Atsushi and Shinji both said and turned to check out their new discovery—the Path on Which Majority Rules.

**Hour 13**

**38 contestants remaining**

* * *

TBC. Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome.

To loove it!!: Thanks for the review:D Yes. And he also likes yellow, because all Rikkai people like yellow xD

To kalista jia: Thanks for the review:D Yeah, it would be nice if we had those questions in our exams xD We'd all score very high.


	28. Chapter 28

Hi! It's been a loooooong time since I last updated—my laptop had problems uploading stuff somehow. Every time I tried the window closed by itself. Anyway, now I'm home for the summer and can use my home computer, I can update again. YAAY!

Since it's been a really long time, I'll start with a recap on everyone's whereabouts. I'm really sorry if there's any confusion.

Kabaji, after digging around in the holes in which he was stuck due to Inui and Yanagi's experiments, discovered a pathway called "Majority rules" and had decided to investigate it along with Atobe and Kisarazu Atsushi, who had nothing better to do. Since Kamio (currently uncounscious) and Shinji were already in the hole, they were coming too.

Kirihara was battling a jaguar with a fire extinguisher. Meanwhile, Oshitari, Inui and Yanagi were having an epic battle with Akutsu.

Kawamura, Fuji, Ryoma, Eiji, Momo, Kaidoh, Yuuta, Bane, Mizuki, Ootori, Marui and Saeki were in a house in the forest, and they were playing with the blowguns Saeki made out of Ootori's straws. Except Fuji, who was playing games on the laptop Yagyuu stole from a helicopter.

Hiyoshi was circling said house, trying to kill all the people inside.

Jiroh had just been declared dead.

Yukimura had been declared dead for some time.

Tachibana, Oishi, Niou, Yagyuu, Sanada and Sengoku were hanging around the area full of holes that Inui and Yanagi had made everyone dig.

Horio, Gakuto, Aoi and Jackal were stuck in said holes.

Dan was sleeping under a tree.

Tezuka, Shishido and Davide were hunting for boars.

I think that's pretty much it. Now on with the story!:D

* * *

"Majority rules… sounds interesting," Atsushi mused. "What do these little characters down here mean?" He pointed to a line of small shapes inscribed under the larger words and turned questioningly to Kabaji, whose voice was as sexy as Atobe's.

"This says 'As long as you have seven people and understand the basic concept of majority rule, you can go on this way. Amen'," Kabaji explained with a voice that was as sexy as Atobe's.

"But why would Sumerians say 'amen'? Do they believe in God? Do they even _have_ that word in their dictionary?" Atsushi exclaimed in horror.

"They probably don't even have a dictionary, you stupid commoner. These cuneiform characters must have been intentionally carved up here long after the Sumerians were gone," Atobe deliberated.

"Okay then. Do we have seven people? Let me see, Kabaji-san, Atobe-san, Kisarazu-san, Kamio-kun and I—that makes five already. We need another two to go in this tunnel with us," Shinji said, counting with his fingers.

"So we can just dig around until we reach two other people and start." Atobe nodded.

"We don't need to dig. We can just get two people from up there—" Shinji pointed upwards at the people still on the ground, "—and we're all set."

"True. Tachibana, you ugly commoner, come down right now," Atobe demanded. Tachibana complied, because though he hated being ordered around by Atobe, he didn't like the concept of two of his most precious teammates going down a dangerous tunnel without him either. Everyone nimbly dodged with their excellent tennis-trained reflexes when they saw him jump, except Kamio, who was unconscious, and Tachibana landed right on top of him. Luckily Kamio knew nothing, or it would have hurt like hell.

"We need another person," Tachibana stated as soon as he got on his feet. This was a simple statement, but coming from Tachibana it seemed like words of wisdom and inspiration.

"Who else is left up there? We can rule out those who are still stuck in holes," Atsushi said, looking at Tachibana for an answer.

"Uh…" Tachibana counted, "Sengoku from Yamabuki, Sanada, Niou and Yagyuu from Rikkai, and Oishi from Seigaku. That's all."

"Then who should we choose as our seventh member?" Shinji mumbled thoughtfully. "Since this is the Path on Which Majority Rules, we should get someone who is not too rebellious and will listen to reason, or else we'll have trouble agreeing with each other if we have to vote on things."

"Which means that Sengoku is out. He will probably make crazy choices because he thinks he is so lucky," Tachibana said. Fudoumine really was the most sensible of all schools. Once Shinji and Tachibana got together, the others had practically no say in anything anymore. Tachibana was a kind person though, and would not neglect other people's opinions.

"So in the remaining four, who do you guys recommend?" he asked Atobe and Atsushi in a friendly manner, so they would not think that he was controlling the situation.

"Sanada," Atobe and Atsushi replied in unison. They high-fived at their perfect synchronization.

"Sanada? Why?" Shinji asked, confused.

"But Sanada seems a bit, uh, traumatized to me. I think he has lost all hope in life after Yukimura died," Tachibana pointed out. "He might make reckless choices and hinder us if he doesn't care about life anymore. Why not the others? Yagyuu and Oishi seem like sensible people, and Niou has proven himself handy to have around."

"Because if we ask Yagyuu to come, Niou will come also, and that will make eight of us. Besides, we're always having trouble telling them apart," Atsushi explained. "As for Oishi—"

"As for Oishi," Atobe continued for him, "we decided not to associate with Seigaku people anymore because they won the Nationals. So we don't want Oishi."

"I see. You're right," Tachibana and Shinji both agreed.

"Now that we have come to a conclusion—" Atobe snapped his fingers, calling upwards. "Sanada, you ugly commoner, come down this minute."

Sanada ignored him. He did not plan on following orders issued by anyone but Yukimura and besides, like Tachibana predicted, he had already lost all hope in life.

"He doesn't seem to want to come along," Atsushi observed, dismayed.

"We'll force him to come. Hey, you up there—are you Yagyuu or Niou? Whoever you are, throw your vice-captain down here," Atobe shouted upwards, snapping his fingers again.

"Sure," Yagyuu (or Niou) replied agreeably and kicked Sanada down into the hole. He had probably wanted to kick Sanada for ages and had been waiting for this opportunity forever.

"Now we have seven." Atobe nodded, satisfied. "We're all set to go. Kabaji, lead the way."

"Usu," Kabaji said, and led the way. Atsushi, the one with the neon lights, came behind him, and then came the three Fudoumine people. In the back, Atobe was dragging Sanada, who was reluctant to go along with them.

The unlikely alliance walked on for a few moments before coming upon a stone inscribed with more cuneiform characters. Atobe, finally catching up with the rest of the group (dragging Sanada was hard work), leaned forward and told Kabaji to explain what the characters meant.

"It says, 'Do you want to leave this island alive? If yes, press the O button on your collar. If not, press the X button on your collar. Amen,'" Kabaji explained.

"Amen? But Sumerians aren't Christians!" Atsushi exclaimed in exasperation. This was the first time he had gotten this much spotlight in the Prince of Tennis series, and he was still in the process of getting used to the newly-found attention.

"What I find really queer is that there isn't any point on asking us whether we want to leave the island alive. Even an idiot can see that we all want to leave alive, thank you very much," Shinji muttered. "So all we have to do is press the O button, right?"

"Yeah, so let's just press it," Tachibana agreed, and they all began looking for the O button in the various weird buttons on their collars. After finally locating them, which took a great while, there being so many buttons on the collars, they counted to three and pressed their buttons in unison. Shinji pressed Kamio's button for him. He alone had two votes and was quite proud of it.

"Now that you've cast your votes, here are the results!" the sweet voice of a girl came out from the speakers fixed on the collars. Most of the group had not noticed that there were speakers on the collars at all, and were quite shocked. "Five of you have picked O, and two pressed the X button, so here's your verdict: you guys do want to leave the island alive! Congratulations!"

"Of _course_ we want to leave the island alive. Is this even worth voting about?" Atobe cried indignantly.

"I wonder why this girl didn't speak in cuneiform," Tachibana pondered.

"Can one speak in cuneiform? I thought it was only used in written form. But then, I wouldn't know—I'm not majoring in history or foreign languages or anything—though they probably won't teach me cuneiform anyway if I were. But frankly, I'm still in junior high, so it's not like I can major in anything—" Shinji murmured on, lost in his own thoughts.

"You guys missed the point completely," Atsushi put in. "The point is, _two people pressed the X button._ Who are the two idiots?"

"Hmm, you're right. This _is_ the point." Atobe frowned, furrowing his magnificent eyebrows.

"Maybe it's Sanada," Tachibana suggested.

"Was it you, Sanada, ahn?" Atobe turned to Sanada. Sanada, as usual, ignored him.

"Must be him," Tachibana said with a shrug. "Didn't I _tell_ you that we should have brought Yagyuu or someone more sensible with us? Sanada has gone nuts!"

"Ore-sama has already explained to you," Atobe repeated, patiently, "that if Yagyuu came Niou would come too, and then we'd have eight people."

"We could just let them each get half a vote or something. At least it would be better than having Sanada with us," Tachibana sighed. He normally liked Sanada, but in this kind of crazy situation that required everyone's cooperation, he preferred not to have an insane guy as a group member.

"Aw, we can just leave Sanada alone. As long as we all unite, Sanada's one vote won't affect us a single bit," Atsushi began, trying to make peace. "Anyway, who's the other one that pressed X?"

Everyone became silent.

**Hour 13.5**

**38 contestants remaining**

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TBC. Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome. I'm really sorry about not updating for so long:(


	29. Chapter 29

"You're right, there's no point blaming Sanada now. What's more important is that we should figure out who the other idiot that pressed the X button is. We don't want a traitor in our midst," Atobe said, snapping his fingers yet again. Atsushi wondered if he ever got tired of snapping his fingers so frequently.

"It's not me," he told Atobe, who was already striding ahead. They were stuck in a life-and-death situation and they could not waste time standing around talking about traitors, so they came to an unspoken agreement that they should just discuss it on the way.

"It's not ore-sama either," Atobe said, wiping sweat from his brow with a silk handkerchief Kabaji handed him. It was getting hot, and he was glad that he was wearing a bikini instead of his uniform. "Kabaji, is it you?"

"Usu… uh, no," Kabaji quickly replied. Now that everyone in the group knew that he could talk, Kabaji decided that there was no point in pretending that 'usu' was the only word he knew anymore.

"It's not me or Kamio-kun either. I was very careful when I pressed our buttons," Shinji put in, muttering.

"Nor me—wait, I think it _was_ me," Tachibana exclaimed, to everyone's surprise (including his own). "I think I pressed the X by accident."

"So it was you, huh?" Atobe glared at him. "You stupid commoner, have you no brains? Are you a gorilla or something?"

"I have brains," Tachibana protested, "and so do gorillas. Gorillas are smart creatures."

"If you have brains, use them!" Atobe cried in frustration. "If you can press the wrong button even at such a crucial point, ore-sama believes that you must have never put your brains into use before. Do you think with your knees or something?"

"Our Tachibana-buchou does not think with his knees," Shinji put in indignantly. "He thinks with his toes."

"I don't think with my—" Tachibana began.

"Aw, guys, just let it go." Atsushi sighed from aside. "It won't happen again if we're all careful."

"Okay then," Atobe said with a shrug. "When do we come to the next voting spot? Ore-sama's exhausted."

"I think we're already here," Atsushi observed, turning the light on his collar on a boulder which stood between two separate tunnels that led ahead into darkness.

"It says 'if you want to head left, press O. Right, press X.'" Kabaji translated.

"Uh, so where should we head?" Tachibana asked, eyeing the two tunnels warily.

"Left," Atobe decided promptly.

"Why not right? I like right better," Shinji murmured.

"We can go left this time and take the right one if there's a next time," Atobe compromised.

"What if there isn't a next time? If we take the wrong tunnel and get stuck in a trap, we won't get a next time," Shinji pointed out.

"You ignorant commoner must comply with ore-sama's wishes, because ore-sama is richer than you," Atobe announced, throwing a temper tantrum then and there.

"Whatever, we'll go left then," Shinji said with a shrug. He knew that it was no use trying to argue with Atobe.

"So we'll all press the O button." Tachibana nodded, looking at his buttons extra cautiously because he did not want to make a mistake again. "Everyone agree?"

"Usu," Kabaji said.

"Whatever." Atsushi rolled his eyes.

So they all bravely counted to three and pressed their O buttons.

--

"Hello—" Sengoku yelled into one of the many holes.

"Hello—" came the echo.

"Cool!" Sengoku exclaimed and turned to Oishi, who was sitting under a tree looking worried to death. "Hey, you from Seigaku, see what an amazing echoing hole I've found."

"Holes don't have echoes, do they? They are not mountains. Besides, our holes aren't that deep," Oishi remarked, obligingly coming to Sengoku's side. He had such a horrible stomachache that he was seriously contemplating the possibility that the soldiers had fitted the bomb in his stomach instead of on his collar.

"This one does," Sengoku told him proudly. "You can try yourself."

Oishi sighed, hands gripping the edge on the hole, and yelled downwards, "Hello—"

"Hello—" the hole replied.

"Strange," Oishi mused. "Maybe I'll try yelling something longer. Hello! Hello! Hello!"

"Hello! Hello! Hello!" the hole answered.

"Wow, this one really has echoes," Oishi exclaimed, surprised. "How about something harder—Hello! Hello! Hello! The wheels of the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round."

"Hello! Hello! Hello! The wheels of the bus go—hey, sorry, I forgot the rest. Do you mind repeating it again?"

Oishi stared. He then realized that Jackal was in the hole and had been playing along with them because he had nothing better to do.

"Ah, so it's you, Jackal. How are you down there?" Oishi inquired in a friendly manner.

"Not bad. I saw a jaguar pass by a while ago though. Did you guys see where it went?"

"I didn't see a jaguar," Oishi exclaimed in surprise. "Maybe I was too busy trying to pull the feathers off Mizuki and Gakuto's eagle."

"I did," Sengoku offered gaily. "I don't know where it's gone though. Too bad we don't have weapons, or we could have cooked it."

"Now that you've mentioned cooking, I wonder why Inui and the others who went looking for firewood aren't back yet? Gathering firewood can't take that long," Oishi put in thoughtfully.

--

The firewood group, also known as the People Who Wear Glasses, had already finished their epic battle with Akutsu. They won. It was quite simple, actually. Before Akutsu could get anywhere near them, Oshitari threw his glasses-wipe at him, covering his eyes. Now that Akutsu couldn't see, the three charged right up to him and kicked him in his groin and various other places that you wouldn't like to be kicked in.

"Do you admit defeat?" Inui asked Akutsu, gripping his wrists tightly from behind, making it impossible for Akutsu to move.

"Join us. You'd look wonderfully sexy in glasses," Oshitari suggested.

Akutsu did not bother to reply. Him, glasses! His dignity would never allow him to wear glasses. He'd rather die.

"How should we torture him?" Yanagi wondered.

"I really don't have anything against him, but we can't just let him go either. He might harm others," Inui pointed out.

"Then should we—" Oshitari began, but before he could finish his sentence a menacing voice broke him.

"Let him go. Now."

**Hour 13.5**

**38 contestants remaining**

TBC. Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome ^_^

to kalista jia: Thanks for the review:D You know, I get the feeling that most of the Rikkai people have been waiting for the chance to kick Sanada for a long time.

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	30. Chapter 30

Inui, Oshitari and Yanagi turned their heads calmly, wondering who the intruder was. In the twenty-first century, people who wore glasses ruled the world, so it took a lot of guts to stand up to two tall people who had glasses and one tall person who didn't. They supposed that only Sanada, who had turned insane, or Fuji, who was a genius even if he did not wear glasses, would dare to interrupt the little fun they were having with their captive, so it was a bit of a surprise when they saw that the intruder was in fact a small, adorable boy with big eyes.

Akutsu scowled. "Damn it, Taiichi, what are you doing here?" He felt like bashing his head on a tree. He started randomly picking fights with people _because_ he wanted to protect this cute little boy, and now this cute little boy had come running headlong into danger himself! Not good.

"I'm here to save you, Akutsu-senpai," Dan explained, looking innocent.

"You have no chance of winning against us," Inui told him kindly. "We wear glasses. You don't. Therefore you lose. End of story."

"Why don't you join us instead? You would look nice with golden-rimmed glasses," Oshitari added. "Trust me, I'm an expert."

"Yeah, don't try picking fights with us. You are not wearing glasses, so you are guaranteed to fail," Yanagi put in.

"_You_ are not wearing glasses either," Inui reminded Yanagi quietly.

While the three tall guys were talking amicably and completely disregarding Dan's existence, Dan pulled out his weapon. It was not the stupid garden pitcher he had found in his bag, but a laser gun. He pulled the trigger, and sliced the tree in front of him in two.

Now everyone turned to gawk at him.

"How did you get such a good weapon?" The three bespectacled (or self-proclaimed bespectacled, in Yanagi's case) students cried in shock. Akutsu was also shocked, but he kept silent because he wanted to look cool.

"Let Akutsu-senpai go, and then I will tell you," Dan shouted.

"We can't let him go," Yanagi whispered to the other two. "As long as we still have Akutsu as hostage Dan won't dare to harm us, but if we let him go he can shoot us with the gun _and_ Akutsu can beat us to pulp."

"Oh. Oops, sorry," Oshitari exclaimed, because he had already obligingly let Akutsu go. Akutsu glared at him but did not try to beat him to pulp, probably because Dan was watching and Akutsu did not want to beat people to pulp in front of Dan.

Dan was immediately satisfied and began his explanation cheerfully. "You see, senpai-tachi, Akutsu-senpai and I planted lettuce, and this lettuce was so big it grew to the heavens! So I climbed up the big lettuce and arrived at the giant's home, and the giant was sleeping, so I stole his laser gun. It was like Jack and the Beanstalk!"

The others all gaped at him. Even Akutsu.

"It's true," Dan said earnestly. "Come with me if you don't believe me."

They went with Dan because they were indeed very curious and, after all, he had a laser gun.

It did not take them long to arrive at the feet of the giant lettuce.

"According to my data, this is just ridiculous. How can lettuce get this big?" Inui wondered, fascinated.

"This is not the only ridiculous thing that have occurred today," Oshitari reminded him. Oshitari, having read too many romance novels, had no problem in believing in unbelievable things.

"Don't you guys want to try climbing it?" Dan asked, jumping up and down in excitement.

"Well, it can be a good way to get data." Yanagi shrugged, and started to climb. Inui and Oshitari, deciding that they had glasses and therefore could not lose face in front of Yanagi who did not, bravely went after him.

Akutsu and Dan stood under the giant lettuce, watching the three disappear into the skies. Akutsu felt embarrassed. _Very_ embarrassed. He—tall, muscled, violent Akutsu—was officially saved by Dan. Small, innocent Dan—his _kouhai_ too—this was too degrading. How could he ever regain his reputation? But then, Akutsu knew that he had to thank Dan some time or another, because it was proper etiquette. Not that he ever cared about proper etiquette, but still.

Akutsu stole a glance at Dan, who was beaming up at him. He realized that he couldn't even look at Dan, let alone thank him.

"Taiichi," he began.

"Yes, senpai?"

"Look, that's Venus." He pointed into the sky.

"Venus?" Dan stared. Akutsu took off running into the forest to hide as soon as Dan turned to look. He was that embarrassed.

--

Dan was not the only young contestant who emerged victorious. Kirihara Akaya, youngest of the Rikkai regulars, had also beaten his opponent the jaguar without much trouble.

"Luckily my senpai had always told me that fire extinguishers were good weapons," he thought to himself fondly. He remembered what his Sanada-fukubuchou told him: "Akaya, the fire extinguisher can be heavy, but it is recorded as one of the ten best weapons in the World Weaponry Ranking (WWR). If you fight with a fire extinguisher as a weapon, you will never lose."

He remembered what his Yanagi-senpai told him: "Akaya, the fire extinguisher is an excellent weapon. You see, the CO2 can distract the enemy successfully, and then you can hit the enemy on the head with the heavy red container. If you fight with a fire extinguisher as a weapon, you will never lose."

He remembered what his Marui-senpau told him: "Akaya, the fire extinguisher is so easy to use. All you have to do is press this here. See? Simple, right? Why don't you try—_shit_!" His bubblegum exploded and got suck all over his face. Niou had a good laugh.

The more Kirihara thought about it, the prouder he was of his senpai. But there was still one problem: what should he do with this jaguar?

"It's not like I can eat it," he thought sadly. He finally decided to leave it there. He did want to show it to his Niou-senpai, but it was too heavy to drag around.

--

After Kirihara slowly trudged away, the jaguar sat up, wincing in pain. It took out a walkie-talkie.

"Coach Ryuuzaki, you didn't tell me that I might get attacked by contestants when I agreed to dress up as a jaguar and spy over them, da ne," it complained.

"It's your own fault, Yanagisawa. We gave you all those knives and guns, and you couldn't even beat one single opponent! I'm very disappointed. I was hoping you could help out a bit if they still won't start killing, but I guess you're just useless," Coach Ryuuzaki yelled at him through the walkie-talkie.

"You can't expect me to fight when dressed like this—"

"Excuses, excuses! Go stalk some other contestant now. Don't idle around on the ground."

"It hurts, da ne—"

"Shut up and just go!"

Yanagisawa sighed, but he shut up and went.

**Hour 14**

**38 contestants remaining**

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TBC. Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome:D

To terrorofthehighway: Thanks for the review xD They are dying because it's part of the game's rules. If they don't kill each other, they will all die in three days time. (Unfortunately, they don't seem to be making much progress…)


	31. Chapter 31

While all this was going on, Atobe, Kabaji, Sanada, Atsushi and the three inseparable Fudoumine people were still underground dealing with the strange maze-like tunnels known as_ The Path on which Majority Rules_.

"And here's your result," the cheerful female voice that seemed to come from their collars announced, "five pressed the O button, two chose X, which means that the majority of you guys have decided to go left. So go on left, my dears!"

Atobe flared up upon hearing the result of the voting. "Who are the two idiots who pressed the wrong button? You again, Sanada?"

Sanada nodded sullenly. He hated life without Yukimura and didn't care.

"We should have gotten Yagyuu to come down instead in the first place," Atsushi muttered dismally.

"And the other idiot—don't tell me it's you again." Atobe turned upon Tachibana furiously.

"Why would I ever make the same mistake twice—hey wait, it _was_ me. I got the buttons mixed up again," Tachibana exclaimed, and penitently hit his own head with his banana as if it could pacify Atobe in some way.

"We should have just brought Yagyuu and Niou and left this stupid Fudoumine captain up there." Atsushi sighed. He felt like kicking somebody, but sadly there was no one at hand whom he dared to kick.

"I'm really sorry. I promise it won't happen again," Tachibana pleaded, feeling stupid.

Atobe glared at him. "You'd better be careful next time. If there is a next time, you must take off your underwear for punishment."

"Anyhow, we are still going left—no harm done." Atushi shrugged nonchantly.

"How do you know that left is the right way to go? What if there are traps?" Shinji murmured pessimistically, but they went left anyway. After all, if they didn't, the voting process would have been pointless.

They did not travel far before they heard a strange rumbling sound. It sounded like thunder.

"Can't be thunder. We're underground." Atobe frowned.

"Might be elephants," Tachibana suggested. "Perhaps some of them live underground and are walking towards us."

"Why is it," Atobe asked exasperatedly, "that you, a captain, is incapable of uttering a single word of sense?"

Tachibana wondered about this also. Things never seemed to go right for him outside Fudoumine. He was still pondering this when he realized that the rumbling sound was made by a rolling stone. A _very_ big rolling stone for that matter. It was coming towards them down the corridor with full speed, and it did not take a genius to see that it would squash them.

"RUUN!" Tachibana yelled and took off towards the opposite direction. Atsushi screamed and followed suit.

"I _told _you that left might not be the correct choice," Shinji muttered to Atobe. He would have rambled on and on about his obvious dislike for Atobe had this not been a life-or-death situation. But it was. A giant rolling stone was coming after him after all, and with an unconscious Kamio stuck to him Shinji could not exactly have run very quickly.

The rolling stone came closer and closer. Shinji realized that he could never outrun it, and could only close his eyes and hope for the best. The deafening sound of the rock rolling became louder and louder, and then—

And then all was silent. Shinji opened his eyes, brushed his blue hair away from his face and discovered that Kabaji had valiantly stood in front of him and stopped the stone with his huge body. Kabaji being Kabaji, he was not hurt at all.

"Th-thanks…" Shinji muttered, still not yet recovered from shock. It suddenly occurred to him that Kabaji was not that bad-looking—he had muscles, tanned skin and nice was brave enough to shield another from a giant rolling stone, _and _knew cuneiform. Shinji decided that maybe Kabaji would make a good boyfriend—Kabaji was always so quiet, and Shinji talked nonstop, so they would complement each other excellently.

As Shinji was thinking this, both Atobe and Tachibana saw the subtle change in his eyes and were horrified.

"Don't, Shinji, it won't work," Tachibana cried quickly.

"Don't, you long-haired commoner, Kabaji's parents won't—" Atobe began.

"But he's my hero now, so you can't stop me," Shinji pointed out indignantly. "Kabaji, do you want to date me?"

"Usu," Kabaji replied as he blocked the boulder from rolling any further by employing several smaller bricks that he found lying around.

"Goodness gracious!" Tachibana and Atobe screamed in unison, disregarding the fact that they had been fighting earlier that moment. Even Sanada looked disturbed.

"Let them be, you two," Atsushi sighed, always the peacemaker. "Since we now know that this isn't the right way, let's just retrace our steps and go right."

Tachibana and Atobe stared at him, their mouths still hanging open because the shock of Shinji and Kabaji wanting to date each other was too big. They nodded at Atsushi, and followed him towards the right path, looking like zombies.

"This isn't that big a deal," Atsushi tried to talk sense into them exasperatedly, but Atobe and Tachibana still had looks that resembled that of shocked conservative parents whose daughter had just come out of the closet. Atsushi could only sigh and lead them through various tunnels and pathways in the huge underground maze. He was happy, because now that no one was talking (except for Shinji, who was telling Kabaji how awesome he was) he could choose whatever path he liked without getting in a fight with other people. Getting to make decisions was rare for him, considering that at home he had to wrestle with his twin over petty things and that at St. Rudolph he had to listen to Mizuki all the time.

After twists and turns in a thousand directions and a long time of tedious walking, the group found themselves in front of what seemed like a pair of huge iron doors.

"What does this mean?" Atsushi asked Kabaji, pointing at the small cuneiform scriptures on one of the doors.

Kabaji stooped down to read them and explained.

"Welcome aboard the Awesome Elevator of Doom. Only six can fit in this elevator, which means that one of you must be left behind."

**Hour 15**

**38 contestants remaining**

* * *

To be continued. Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome.

To kalista Jia: Thanks for the review :D I know, it _is_ ridiculous. xD


	32. Chapter 32

"So, basically, one of us has to stay here while the rest of us mount this elevator," Tachibana concluded. "Who should we leave behind then?"

"Sanada, of course," Shinji said. "He's useless, presses all the wrong buttons, and is a drag."

"He's not the only one who's a drag though. Tachibana here is no better really," Atobe pointed out.

"But Tachibana-buchou—" Shinji began loyally.

"That can wait till later," Atsushi put in impatiently. "What we should figure out first is _where_ that elevator leads to. If it's going to take us to some crazy place like Coach Ryuuzaki's Romance Laboratory or something I'd much rather stay here, thank you very much."

"Makes sense. It might take us to someplace dangerous, and maybe staying here is actually the safer choice," Tachibana agreed.

After a bit of discussion, they came to the conclusion that, though it was stated that the elevator could hold six people, there was no reason why they shouldn't send just one person inside to check out things first, and it was decided that Tachibana should be the hero for once and investigate alone while everyone else remained at the same spot to wait for his report. Though Atobe and Atsushi was against Tachibana going at first (he had proven himself to be unreliable), Atobe was too proud to go himself, Atsushi had too glittery a collar which might make him a target for enemies, Sanada hated life, Kabaji wouldn't talk, and Shinji was stuck with an immobile Kamio, so Tachibana was really the only logical choice.

"Better prove yourself useful," Atobe told him.

"Buchou, do come back alive," Shinji sobbed as Tachibana, who had a mole on his head (he might have had moles on many other body parts as well, but we don't know for sure), walked heroically into the elevator and headed towards the unknown.

--

While the adventurous underground group was having the excitement of their lives, the rest of the contestants were feeling nervous. They had every right to be, for it had been almost three hours since Jiroh's death was announced, and they knew that if no one had died during this period they would all be blown up with their collars.

"I wonder who will be the next one to die?" Fuji remarked thoughtfully as he played Windows Vista Purble Place. "One Rikkai student and one Hyoutei student had died already. Perhaps the next one will be from Seigaku."

"Fuji-san, don't say such scary things," Bane exclaimed. There were a good lot of Seigaku people around him, and if one of them just went and died without warning he would be traumatized for his whole life.

"I did not say anything," Fuji Yuuta pointed out as he played with the blowgun Saeki made for him.

"I didn't mean you. You see, we call your brother Fuji and you Yuuta for convenience," Bane explained.

"Why not call me by my last name and my brother by his first?" Yuuta demanded, looking hurt. It was a touchy subject for him.

"Because Syuusuke's too long and such a nuisance to pronounce," Bane told him. Yuuta was immediately satisfied.

Coach Ryuuzaki chose this moment to do her broadcasting. "Hey everyone! Haven't you missed me? Well, since three hours have already passed and no one had died, all your collars are going to explode in ten seconds! Good-bye, everyone! Ten, nine, eight…"

"_What?_" All the people who were currently on the island screamed and started throwing things they had in their hands like blowguns and tissues.

"Seven, six, five…"

"Aniki, I, um, need to tell you that you are really the best older brother anyone could ask for," Yuuta said tearfully.

"Ah, I'm so glad to hear this." Fuji sighed contently.

"Three, two, one—haha! I was just kidding!"

Everyone screamed and started throwing things again.

"I _knew_ she was kidding." Niou shrugged. He was playing Bingo with Yagyuu by writing numbers on the ground with Yagyuu's eyeliner. "Twenty-two, bingo!"

"Damn it, you've won again," Yagyuu muttered under his breath. He didn't bother to be a gentleman when he was with Niou.

"May I play too?" Sengoku asked from aside because he was bored. Oishi, who was also sitting around looking bored, felt a stomachache coming again when he realized that Niou, Yagyuu and Sengoku were actually dense enough to play Bingo in such a critical life-or-death situation.

"I'm very happy since there had been quite a lot of deaths in these three hours. Which is why I am in the mood of cracking jokes," Coach Ryuuzaki explained. "Eleven had died in the past three hours. Very well—you have finally started taking the program seriously."

"Eleven? Wow." Even Niou was interested now.

"I suppose the people in the holes are fine. We are fine too, so this means that many of the others have gotten in trouble," Yagyuu said as he pushed up his glasses. None of the other people who wore glasses were present, and he wanted to make up for their absence by pushing up his glasses as many times as he could.

"Can you tell us who's dead?" Sengoku asked, assuming that Coach Ryuuzaki could hear him.

"Let me see—Tachibana, Ibu and Kamio from Fudoumine, Yanagi and Sanada from Rikkai Dai, Inui from Seigaku, Kisarazu Atsushi from St. Rudolph, Kisarazu Ryou from Rokkaku, Atobe, Kabaji and Oshitari from Hyoutei. That was excellent—you should congratulate yourself on the progress. Now that you know who had died, I'd better go take a bath. Bye-bye!" And thus ended her broadcast.

"Lucky! Ours are the only school in which everyone's still alive," Sengoku cried happily.

"Your school's got the fewest contestants in the first place, so it's not actually something to boast about." Niou rolled his eyes.

"Why… did… Inui... die?" Oishi was sobbing. "And Fudoumine! They were the nicest people in the whole world! And now they're all dead!" He banged his fists on a tree.

Niou, Yagyuu and Sengoku tried to comfort him, but to no avail. Niou and Yagyuu were not actually happy either—they liked Yanagi and Sanada despite all their weirdness, and did not want them dead.

"Strange. So the ones who went on the Majority Rules excursion or whatever it is are all dead?" Yagyuu wondered, looking down into the deep hole which the seven students had disappeared into. Having kicked Sanada down into the hole, he knew all about the strange excursion.

"Maybe there's poisonous gas down there or something," Niou deduced, joining him.

"Maybe there are traps down there," Yagyuu added, looking serious. "It's dark after all, so it's not that easy to avoid traps."

"Maybe they suddenly hated each other and killed each other."

"Maybe they all had heart attacks."

"Maybe they were eaten by giant underground worms."

"Maybe they—well, making guesses won't solve the problem. We'd better—"

"Yeah," Niou put in before Yagyuu could finish. "We'd better go in after them to check. It's not like Bingo is any fun."

**Hour 15**

**28 contestants remaining**

* * *

TBC. Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome.

To Animeannie: Thanks for the review:D cuneiform is some kind of writing form tht Sumerians used long, long ago. I think. My history is no good.

To kalista Jia: Thanks for the review! Shinji and Kabaji seem to complement each other very well.

To Psychoxxchun: Thanks for the review:D I guess I did get the idea from hunter x hunter. It's really an awesome manga, though the artist is lazy and never updates.

To Rock_Ch!!nCeZ: Thanks for the review:D Your name's quite interesting. What does it stand for?


	33. Chapter 33

"It's boring around here anyway. Let's jump into the hole together," Niou told Yagyuu.

They held hands like cute little schoolgirls and were all ready to take a leap into the unknown when Yagyuu shook his head. "Wait, too dark down there."

So they searched Yagyuu's collar for the _lumos_ button because Saeki had told them all about it. They found it, pressed it, and Yagyuu became the third contestant whose collar shone in seventeen different colors. He felt lonely being the only shining person about, so he pressed Niou's _lumos_ button too and they became two shining people.

"Are you two going exploring?" Sengoku asked. He'd much rather hang out with Niou and Yagyuu, who were interesting, than with Oishi, who was holding his stomach and crying.

"Come on then." Yagyuu extended his right hand, and the three of them linked hands and leapt into the hole. Like their successors, they came to the opening which led to the Path on which Majority Rules.

"I remember that when they told us to kick Sanada down there, they said that they needed seven people to take this path, which was why they wanted Sanada," Yagyuu said. He had an excellent memory and therefore got straight A's.

"Why can't three people do it? We can vote just as well as seven people," Niou countered, and being rebellious he walked right through the opening. "See? There's only one of me and nothing happened—"

Then his collar started beeping. A cute girly voice stated, "This is the Path on which Majority Rules—Seven People Version! If less than seven enter, there will be consequences! Get out in three seconds or we'll bomb your home! Three—two—"

Niou sighed and walked out. He did not want his house bombed.

"What should we do now then? We can't go in, and we can't go up either. This hole's too deep," Sengoku pointed out.

"That Oishi from Seigaku's still up there, isn't he? Let's ask him to get us some other people so we can make seven," Yagyuu suggested, pointing upwards.

They all agreed that it was the only thing to do.

--

The contestants who were declared dead by Coach Ryuuzaki were in fact quite happily alive on this planet. The reason that Coach Ryuuzaki thought them dead was because, as Inui and Yanagi had predicted, their collars could not be detected in certain areas, and these people had unknowingly entered these areas. The underground group of seven had gone too deep, while Inui, Yanagi and Oshitari had gone too high on their giant lettuce, which was still growing taller and taller. Coach Ryuuzaki did not stare at the monitor screens all the time because it was too boring, and in fact had been playing mahjong with the soldiers and eating pizza, so naturally she did not know where the contestants went and assumed that they were truly killed. After all, she was only hosting the show because her friend, a professor, had asked her to help in the experiment and promised her twenty yen plus a new mahjong set, and did not really care what the outcome was. It would naturally be nice if the winner was from Seigaku, but as long as she got the twenty yen and the new mahjong set it was fine with her even if it turned out to be someone from another school.

Anyway, because of the reasons stated above, Inui, Yanagi and Oshitari, self-proclaimed the Smart People with Glasses (even though one-third of their members did not wear glasses) were still busily climbing up the giant lettuce. They wondered when they would get to the giant's house. (Unbeknownst to them, they had already passed it some time ago.)

"Luckily we had extensive tennis training," Inui remarked, "or else we would have been tired out after climbing for so long."

"When we arrive at the top, we shall fix a national flag of Japan up there," Yanagi suggested, being surprisingly patriotic.

"True. One small step for us, one giant leap for mankind," Oshitari agreed. "Still, we don't have a national flag with us."

"Maybe I can make my Rikkai uniform into a flag. It's such a splendid yellow," Yanagi suggested.

"That's right. We can use this stick I had picked up when we were drawing Rubik's Cubes on the ground as a pole," Oshitari said, satisfied. Feeling hungry after climbing for such a long time, he started munching on bits of the giant lettuce as he climbed.

"You are quite clever to have thought of keeping that stick for so long," Inui praised him. "People with glasses are truly the best."

"That's right. Glasses rule the world," Oshitari said, pushing up his glasses with one hand because if he had done it with two hands he would have fallen off the giant lettuce.

"Yes, glasses are magnificent." Yanagi sighed, looking dreamily at the faraway skies, completely disregarding the fact that he wasn't wearing any glasses.

--

Meanwhile, the Underground Seven were making plans to launch an attack. An attack on what, you ask? This was what happened. Tachibana Kippei, who as mentioned before had a mole on his forehead, went in the elevator, which took him upstairs into Coach Ryuuzaki's bathroom in the base. I will not begin to describe just what exactly he saw in it, but I can tell you that it was quite a shock for Tachibana, who was still a virgin.

"So if we take this elevator up there, we can attack the base," Tachibana announced to the other six (excluding Kamio, who was unconscious).

"Hmm. Didn't they say that the area around the base was a forbidden zone? How come you went in and are still alive?" Atsushi wondered. Having been stuck underground for so long, he did not hear Coach Ryuuzaki's last broadcast, and therefore did not know that they had already been declared dead and to dead people the forbidden zones automatically didn't count anymore.

"Maybe the effect has worn off or something. Anyway, now we can launch our attack without being hindered by the collars." Shinji nodded. "But how can we beat the people at the base? There are soldiers with knives and guns and cannonballs, and we don't have any weapons to speak of."

"Let's just wing it," Atobe said impatiently. He was, after all, a silver-haired, rich and spoiled captain, and for him things usually went right.

"Yeah, let's wing it!" Atsushi shouted, feeling enthusiastic all of a sudden. Atobe had this effect on people, which was why he was such a great captain.

"Shouldn't we make plans?" practical Tachibana asked in horror.

"Real men don't need plans," Atobe dismissed Tachibana's comment with a wave of his lily-like hand. "Let's just decide who we want to leave behind and start off already. It's obvious who should stay behind anyway."

"Yeah, really obvious," Atsushi agreed. He was ready to agree with everything Atobe said now. As mentioned previously, Atobe had this effect on people.

They all cast their votes. It was decided that Shinji was to be left behind as a result.

"_What? _Why me? Shouldn't it have been Sanada?" Shinji yelled in shock, pointing at the traitors who had voted for him (including his beloved captain).

"You see, Shinji, we are attacking the base," Tachibana explained embarrassedly. "We need Sanada's samurai sword. And since Kamio's hand is attached to your collar, it's not like you can move quickly, so it might be very dangerous for you to come along."

"To put it briefly, you're deadweight," Atobe told him, not bothering to be nice.

Shinji felt very much like crying.

"Aw, don't worry. We'll come back to pick you up once we kill all the soldiers at the base," Atsushi comforted him, patting him on the back.

"Yeah, we won't forget you." Tachibana took a deep breath and turned towards the opening elevator door. "So, are we ready?"

"What are we waiting for?" Atobe snapped his fingers in the air and led the way into the opening elevator. The elevator lights seemed extraordinarily bright in their current darkness. Kabaji and Atsushi were at his left, Tachibana and Sanada on his right.

"Ore-sama no bigi ni, yoi na."

Then they disappeared through the doors. For Shinji, this was one of the scenes he would remember for the rest of his life. Somehow, even if they _had_ decided to leave him behind, at this moment these five seemed to him very beautiful.

**Hour 15.5**

**28 contestants remaining**

* * *

TBC. Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome.


	34. Chapter 34

The elevator slowly brought the five brave warriors (at least that was what they thought they were) towards their unknown—no, known—destination: Coach Ryuuzaki's bathroom. Atobe, despite being a spoiled brat, was a captain after all and bravely stood closest to the elevator doors in leading position. Behind him were his faithful follower Kabaji, who was holding an umbrella, and Tachibana, who was holding a banana. Behind _them_ were Atsushi, who was brandishing his weapon, a pair of chopsticks (the people who distributed the weapons had planned for the twins to have one chopstick each, but since Kisarazu Ryou was stuck constipated in the restroom and wasn't abducted Atsushi got both of the chopsticks), and Sanada, who was wielding his weapon, a samurai sword.

"I do think it's a bit of a waste," Atushsi told Atobe. "I mean, you are standing in the front and have no weapon, while Sanada has got the best weapon and is standing way back here."

"True." Atobe contemplated this and nodded. "It wouldn't do for a glorious leader like ore-sama to not have a weapon. Sanada, you commoner, hand over your sword."

"No," Sanada said expressionlessly. The samurai sword had been _his_ weapon all along after all, and he did not want to hand it to that weird bikini-clad Hyoutei captain who was so very impolite and called him and all the others in Rikkai _commoners_.

Atobe was used to getting his way all the time, so he declared "give it to ore-sama" and reached over to grab the sword from Sanada. Sanada, enraged, slashed at Atobe with it. The others all screamed and ducked, and the samurai sword went flying out of the elevator doors, which were opening, and landed right inside Coach Ryuuzaki's bathroom. Coach Ryuuzaki, who was just stepping out happily from her bathtub naked, was quite shocked.

The students were also shocked. Anyone would be if Coach Ryuuzaki had walked naked into their view.

"Oh my God, you perverts!" Coach Ryuuzaki finally recovered her senses and began to shriek. She picked up her ducky soap and threw it at Tachibana, who was unfortunately standing the closest to her.

"It's not my fault that you made an elevator in your bathroom. What sane person makes an elevator in her _bathroom_?" Tachibana cried innocently.

"Ugh, just leave her alone. Let's attack the base," Atobe declared, scooped up the samurai sword which was lying on the floor with one hand and Coach Ryuuzaki's bath towel with another (he figured that without her bath towel Coach Ryuuzaki would not dare leave the bathroom, and the fewer the enemies the better), flung open the bathroom door and led the other four into the base.

The soldiers in the base were having a barbecue party right there outside the bathroom and having a great time, so imagine their shock when a silver-haired student in nothing but a bikini came charging at them with a samurai sword in one hand and a bath towel in another. One of the soldiers quickly picked up his gun and took aim. Atobe noticed this, and immediately covered the soldier's face with the bath towel. The soldier had never learned how to aim without being able to see (unlike Fuji, who could play tennis with his eyes closed), panicked, aimed in the wrong direction and blasted the head of another soldier off.

"My goodness! Jason!" the unfortunate soldier cried when he finally disentangled himself from the bath towel, which smelled like Coach Ryuuzaki, to discover that he had killed his friend Jason instead of Atobe.

Atobe, meanwhile, was already ferociously attacking every soldier he could see with the samurai sword. Tachibana came behind him and attempted to fight with his banana, but soon realized that this was pointless and switched to using the ducky soap he got from Coach Ryuuzaki instead. The unfortunate soldier who had shot his friend Jason passed him sobbing, and Tachibana stuffed the ducky soap into his open mouth. The soldier was so surprised that anyone would have stuffed a ducky soap into anyone's mouth that he swallowed it and started rolling on the floor in agony.

"How did such an idiot ever become a soldier?" Tachibana wondered in dismay at the state of their military system.

The three other students were also busy fighting. Atsushi, being a tennis player, was able to swiftly dodge the bullets that came raining down on him and successfully stuck one of his chopsticks into the eye of a soldier and the other into his butt. Kabaji became very much like a raving Godzilla and picked up the pork chops that were on the grill with his bare hands and threw them around the room. Deciding that it was not effective enough, he kicked the whole grill set onto the floor and set the room on fire. Sanada, who had continuously lectured Kirihara Akaya on how fire extinguishers were the best weapon in the world, was true to his word and fought with a fire extinguisher he found in the corner of the room. Coach Ryuuzaki was so surprised that the students could put up such a fight that she hid in the bathroom and dared not come out. Of course, it could also be because she did not have a bath towel.

However, in the end the students lost the battle. There were only five of them, and they had lousy weapons, while there were a lot of soldiers with a lot of excellent weapons. They did manage to kill quite a few, but finally they were caught and tied down to the pillars in the room. There were an awful lot of pillars, so they each got one.

"Well, well, well," the leader of the soldiers, Rob, muttered viciously as he circled the five students, revolver in hand. "That was very brave of you to rebel against the program."

"And now," a soldier called Miller continued for him, "we are going to show you just how rebels are going to be punished. Now-now, pretty boy, you're awful good-looking, aren't you?" He scrutinized Atushi with dangerously lustful eyes.

"Uh, I'm not really that good-looking, thank you," Atsushi said modestly. He was ecstatic inside though—in his whole life no one had ever called him "hot" or anything along that line, because whenever people saw him they either started remarking how much he looked like Ryou or how much Ryou looked like him. It was one of the disadvantages of being a twin.

"Wanna have some fun with me, pretty boy?" Miller went on, eyeing Atsushi in a dirty way that made him think of sex fetishes, whips and candles, causing him to squirm uncomfortably. He was tied up though, so it was not like he could squirm very much.

"You ignorant commoner, don't you have eyes?" Atobe interjected from aside. "Ore-sama is _much_ more handsome than that lowly Kisarazu."

"You mean _you_ wanna have a little fun with me?" Miller asked, switching his attention to Atobe. "That's nice. Veeeery nice. Heroic."

"Thanks," Atsushi whispered to Atobe with grateful tears in his eyes. He did not know, of course, that Atobe was not trying to save him, and was simply stating the fact that he, glorious Atobe, was the best looking of them all.

"Hmm, good choice, Miller," Miller's best buddy, Zac, commented. "But I like this one better though. He's pretty cute, don't you think?" He pointed at Kabaji.

"Usu," Kabaji exclaimed in surprise.

"You like me, boy?"

"Usu."

"Wanna have some fun with me, boy?"

"Usu."

"Kabaji!" Atobe hollered. "Don't forget you've still got that long-haired commoner Ibu."

"Usu."

While Tachibana and Sanada were sadly contemplating why the soldiers actually found Kabaji better-looking than they were, the bathroom door swung open. Coach Ryuuzaki stood there in all her glory.

"Let these students go, and then go back to your homes. I don't want to ever see you again," she ordered. "Don't forget to deactivate everyone's collars."

The soldiers all stared in horror. They could not understand why Coach Ryuuzaki would give such orders, but nevertheless said "yes, ma'am" and did as they were told. They knew better than to cross Coach Ryuuzaki.

The five students tied on the pillars were as shocked as the soldiers were.

"But why, Coach Ryuuzaki? Why let us go now?"

**Hour 16**

**28 contestants remaining**

* * *

TBC. Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome :D


	35. Chapter 35

"B-but Coach Ryuuzaki, why?" Atobe and his four followers gaped in shock and disbelief at Coach Ryuuzaki, who appeared to have just come out of the shower and was looking radiant in her new bathrobe.

"Coach Ryuuzaki, just _what_ is going on?" Sanada, finally recovering his long-lost senses, inquired cautiously. To his surprise and horror, Coach Ryuuzaki began to pull off her bathrobe in reply to his question. Sanada cringed at the thought of seeing Coach Ryuuzaki naked and immediately shut his eyes.

"Well, well--I'm surprised, Sanada-fukubuchou, that not even _you_ recognized me. Do I look _that_ like Coach Ryuuzaki?" Coach Ryuuzaki, who was really Niou in disgiuse, sighed pathetically as he threw the bathrobe on the floor.

"I don't want to see _you_ naked either," Sanada declared, desperately keeping his eyes shut.

"Geez, of course I'm wearing my tennis uniform underneath. See? It's our yellow Rikkai uniform," Niou told him exasperatedly.

"Where did the real Coach Ryuuzaki go?" Tachibana wondered from aside.

That moment, several people paraded out of the bathroom. Tezuka was in the lead, and Kirihara following in a gaily manner. Behind them were Yagyuu and Sengoku, who held a cursing and fuming Coach Ryuuzaki in their grasp. Her hands were tied by an apron string--Oishi had an apron for his weapon, and the group had taken it from him.

"Atobe, I guess you can't do without us, can you?" Shishido said with a grin as he emerged from the bathroom looking triumphant (even though the capturing of Coach Ryuuzaki really did not have anything to do with him).

--

How did this unlikely group arrive at their current situation? We'd have to go back to when Tezuka, Davide and Shishido had returned from their boar-hunting expedition. After following the wooden signs that pointed to the boars for some time they found a particular sign that read "_Sorry, you're too late--the boars are already extinct! Better luck next time_", and had to turn back and abandon their cause. They soon were back at the ground that was full of holes and ran into Oishi, who was faithfully following the instructions of Niou, Yagyuu and Sengoku, who wanted him to look for likely members who were willing to accompany them on their _Majority Rules_ journey.

"So what you are saying is that the previous seven who had gone in had died mysteriously and these three want to investigate?" Shishido folded his arms across his chest with an expression of extreme annoyance. "That's insane. The fact that all seven of them had died ought to prove that the path is dangerous. How can you expect me to go with them?"

"I know. I don't like the idea either, which is why I'm looking for other volunteers instead of going myself," Oishi agreed.

"I will not go. That would be letting my guard down," Tezuka declared solemnly.

"I'd rather like to go," Davide remarked thoughtfully. "It seems like fun." Being a member of the Rokkaku tennis team, he naturally loved adventure (and the ocean).

"You should not let your guard down. We shall stay here and cook the eagle," Tezuka ordered.

"Ah yes, let's cook the eagle," Shishido, who had completely forgotten that there was an eagle at all, exclaimed enthusiastically. Anything was better than going down into a hole in which seven people had died (and worse, one of them was Atobe).

"Aw, so you guys are not going?" Davide whined.

"Of course not," Tezuka replied sternly. "And you shouldn't either."

"No," Oishi said apologetically.

"I'm not going either," Shishido announced. That was when Kirihara, who had just emerged victorious from his epic battle with the jaguar, who was actually Yanagisawa Shinya, reached the gathering and decided to butt in.

"Where? Where are you guys not going?"

"We are not going down that hole," Shishido told him kindly. "Sengoku, Yagyuu and Niou are down there, and they want someone to go with them on this Path on which Majority Rules, but we're not going because it's too dan—" but he never got to finish his sentence because Kirihara had already sprinted to the side of the hole, glad to hear that his senpai were down there.

"Senpai!" he yelled, waving wildly at Niou and Yagyuu.

"Akaya!" Niou waved back wildly as well. "Wanna come down and join us?"

"Okay, but this hole is pretty deep, I don't think—" Kirihara murmured, suddenly feeling small. The hole indeed went quite a long way down, and it intimidated Kirihara, even though he would much more rather be with his senpai than weird people from other schools.

"Akaya, now, do not be a coward. If Yukimura-buchou was alive, he would certainly condemn this sort of behavior," Niou reprimanded.

"But--" But I don't have legs as long as yours, Kirihara thought dismally. That's so unfair.

"Come on, we Rikkai people are brave, unlike those cowardly Seigaku and Hyoutei people," Niou lectured him in a loud voice. Shishido, as Niou expected, reacted on the spot.

"Who says we Hyoutei students are cowards? I'll show you right now," he hollered, and leapt down into the hole.

"See? Akaya, even the cowardly Hyoutei guy has jumped. Don't be like those pretentious Seigaku people who say that they won't jump because of righteous reasons but actually won't jump because they're too scared. You know what I've always said—all Seigaku is cowardly except for Fuji Syuu—"

Oishi was much too calm to have fallen into the trap, but he could not stop Tezuka from doing so. Tezuka stood up just like Shishido had done. "Watch carefully, Kirihara. I shall demonstrate how to jump into the hole." Then he jumped.

"Quite simple, wasn't it, Akaya? Come on—ah, I see that the Rokkaku person has come down too," Niou observed as Davide, deciding that if Shishido and Tezuka, who had previously declined to jump in, had jumped, there was no reason why he, who had wanted to jump in in the first place, shouldn't, joined the party.

"Um, okay," Kirihara muttered, biting his lip. He thought that it was really unfair for his senpai to call him cowardly—he had jumped out of a helicopter just a few hours ago, hadn't he?

He inched closer to the hole. Suddenly Gakuto, who was reading his hoard of Doraemon manga in his hole, screamed "YAAAY! I've finished book one hundred and fifty-eight!" Kirihara was so surprised that he toppled right into the hole, and was caught by Tezuka, who was standing expressionlessly underneath.

"See? Pretty easy, wasn't it?" Niou remarked.

"Well, now you have seven people, so I guess you won't need me," Oishi said, peeking down the hole with relief.

The others all agreed to let him stay up there because they didn't really think that Oishi would be of any help. They started off on the path (Tezuka and Shishido, though reluctant at first, realized that they were outnumbered and that they didn't have anything better to do anyway and finally went grudgingly along) without any knowledge of what to do, what buttons to press or cuneiform, but made their way to the same elevator their predecessors had found with surprising ease because they had Sengoku with them and Sengoku was lucky.

Shinji, who was still sitting there waiting, explained to them the situation, and faced with the same choice of leaving one person behind, they chose to leave Davide to keep Shinji company (he made too many bad puns and was annoying), and went up the elevator with their respective weapons to help Atobe and co. out.

That was how they came to the base and rescued their friends by simple but effective impersonation.

"Stop standing there pretending to be Coach Ryuuzaki—come on and let ore-sama go already," Atobe scolded.

"The collars are all deactivated now," Atsushi muttered, studying his collar which no longer shone in seventeen colors. "What should we do next?"

"Well—" Atobe, Tachibana and Tezuka all began, and paused when they discovered that there were three captains at hand and all three wanted to take control of the situation. Finally they decided on the leader by Rock, Paper, Scissors, and Atobe won easily because Tezuka was holding Coach Ryuuzaki hostage and couldn't use his hands, and Tachibana was still tied and couldn't use his hands either.

"Well," Atobe cleared his throat. "What we should do next, of course, is to grab all the weapons we can find here in the base, go grab all the other people who are still alive, steal a ship, go back to Japan and bomb the house of that asshole of a professor who made this insane experiment."

The others had never agreed with him more.

**Hour 16**

**28 contestants remaining**

* * *

Sorry about not updating for so long. I've been soooooooo busy...:(

To be continued. Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome.


	36. Chapter 36

"Watch us, Fuji! This is officially the longest blowgun we've ever made. See? We stuck thirty straws together with adhesive tape. Now it's soooooo long," Eiji told his friend triumphantly, exhibiting the long blowgun.

"Ah, I see. It's very nicely made," Fuji complimented. While the others were experimenting with blowguns, he was busily playing Windows Vista Purble Place, not because he especially liked Purble Place but because there really wasn't anything else to do, there being no Internet connection on the island. There was iTunes on the laptop though, and he had been enjoying Parker's music for free.

"Fshuu... why is it that I can't blow my paper balls as far as you guys?" Kaidoh lamented as he studied his own hand-made blowgun. He was never an expert on hand-made crafts, and still felt lost even though he had followed Saeki's instructions faithfully.

"Hmm, let me see," Momo offered, accepting the blowgun and turning it around in his hands and then holding it up to see it in the light. "I think something's stuck in your straw. I'll get it out."

"Is there? Weird. How can anything get stuck in this?" Kaidoh wondered, looking devastated. Battle Royale was indeed the strangest kind of program—in Battle Royale friends can turn into foes, while sworn enemies can actually start to get along amiably with each other.

"I've got a problem too," Saeki muttered. "Hadn't my collar been shining in seventeen colors for some time? It doesn't shine anymore."

"You're right," Yuuta observed. "Maybe it's out of battery power. Hey perhaps it doesn't work anymore and won't explode even if you take it off."

"Now that's interesting," Fuji put in. "Let's press this '_explode_' button and see what happens."

"Wait a minute—what if it still works? Can't you try some of the other buttons, like this '_eat your hand_' one?" Saeki cried out and pointed at the same button that got Shinji and Kamio stuck together like Siamese twins.

"Well, okay," Momo said and bravely pressed the button he was told to.

Nothing happened.

"Whew, that's good—I don't want my hand eaten. How about we try this one that says '_press me and listen to the newest NEWS album_'?"

Still nothing happened.

"Pity. I'd rather like to listen to the newest NEWS album." Mizuki sighed, being unexpectedly a NEWS fan.

"I guess it's safe to try out the '_explode_' button now," Fuji suggested. "If this important one doesn't work either I suppose the whole collar's just plain useless."

"Fine." Saeki courageously nodded, taking a deep breath.

"Um, okay," Momo agreed, also courageously since if Saeki's collar did explode it would probably affect his hand and his future as a tennis player.

He pressed the button. Everyone held their breaths.

Nothing happened.

"Whee! That means that I won't die!" Saeki shouted in ecstasy.

"So the way to deal with a collar is to press the _lumos_ button and let it shine until it runs out of batteries? That's actually quite simple," Eiji exclaimed. "So let's all press our _lumos_ buttons. Oh, maybe we should press the NEWS album button, the KAT-TUN album button and the Arashi album button too, so that it will run out of electricity sooner."

"Don't, Eiji—if all three albums start playing at the same time, the music will clash and our ears will—m" Fuji, who appreciated high-quality music, cried in horror.

It was too late. Eiji had already pressed all the buttons, and everyone reflexively covered their ears.

But still nothing happened.

"Hey, mine's probably also out of electricity," Eiji decided.

"Pity. I'd rather like to listen to the newest NEWS album." Mizuki sighed, being unexpectedly a NEWS fan.

"But you didn't press anything, unlike me," Saeki said, puzzled. "There must be some kind of problem."

Everyone started trying out their own buttons and came to the conclusion that none of the collars worked anymore.

"So does this mean that we won't die?" Eiji asked happily.

"Pity. I'd rather like to listen to the newest NEWS album." Mizuki sighed, being unexpectedly a NEWS fan.

"Hey, guys," Marui interrupted suddenly. The only Rikkai student among those stranded in the house, he had been watching TV all along and did not join in the conversation because he was of the opinion that talking with idiots would harm his genius status. "Look at this."

"What? Is there a new Keanu Reeves movie on?" Bane, being unexpectedly a Keanu Reeves fan, asked.

"No, it's the news channel. Come watch," Marui told him, still staring at the screen.

The group gathered around the television. It was a news report featuring Atobe's father, who seemed to have already dispatched a fleet of ships in search of his precious son.

"Atobe-san, how did you get the information that your son has been captured and sent into a Battle Royale program?" A reporter asked, stuffing a microphone into the hands of Atobe's father.

"I got a message tied to the leg of a pigeon," Atobe's father exclaimed gruffily. "It read _Hi, Mr. Atobe! Your son is kidnapped onto an island for a Battle Royale program. Come rescue him before he dies. Lucky!_"

"But Atobe-san, that piece of information sounds very far-fetched. How can you believe that it is the truth?" The reporter persisted.

"Pigeons, like doves, are holy animals. Of course it is true." Atobe's father waved the reporter away with impatience.

"Well, Atobe-san, some hours have already passed. Why haven't your fleet come back with your son yet?" Another reporter put in.

"It didn't say on the note which island he's on. How can they find him this quickly? Shoo, or I'll set the dogs on you." (Sengoku, who had sent the note via his weapon, a pigeon, could not really be blamed for this. He didn't know which island he was on either, so it was not like he could tell Atobe's father.)

The group in the house felt quite envious of Atobe for having such a rich father who could launch ships in search for him.

"This is a problem though. How can we help Atobe's dad find us?" Ootori asked.

"That'd be hard, seeing that we ourselves don't know where we are," Kawamura said sadly.

"We might as well build our own fleet of battleships ourselves and attack base," Fuji said with a shrug. "We've got a lot of guns and a lot of blowguns. Of course, we don't have ships, but it doesn't matter since we are not going by water."

"Hey, that makes sense. Why haven't we thought of it before?" Momo sprang up, all ready to go.

"We _had_ thought of it before. It's just that we couldn't get close to the base because we feared that our collars would explode, so we couldn't do it. But now our collars don't work, so there really isn't anything holding us back," Ryoma pointed out, wondering why his Momo-senpai was such an idiot.

"You're right. Why hadn't I thought of that?" Momo exclaimed and exchanged high-fives with Eiji for no particular reason.

"So what are we waiting for?" Bane exclaimed hotheadedly as he picked up one of Fuji's collection of shotguns and his own K-shaped weapon.

"We're waiting for _Bourne's Identity_ to finish, obviously," Marui replied, ruining Bane's glorious moment.

"Geez, forget _Bourne's Identity_! You can watch it when we get home!" the others all yelled and picked up a kicking and screaming Marui ("But I wanna know whether Matt Damon is still alive!") and started off on their adventure.

Fuji had never been a captain, but somehow on moments like this everyone came to the silent agreement that he was to lead. He twirled the shotgun in his hand like it was a tennis racket, and smiled. It was one of the very dangerous Fuji smiles.

"Let's kill them all."

**Hour 17**

**28 contestants remaining**

* * *

Sorry I took like forever to update. I've been soooooooooooooo busy...

To be continued. Thanks for reading! Reviews are always welcome.


	37. Chapter 37

The Watch Television Till We Die Alliance, finally abandoning their house in the woods, slowly approached the base of Coach Ryuuzaki and the soldiers, wielding their shotguns. Without the collars to hinder them, they became extra brave and all would have run headlong into the base if Ootori had not sensibly stopped them.

"We'd better check the place out first," Ootori warned the others cautiously. He wondered inside why he and Ryoma seemed to be the only two careful people in the group while all the senpai had no common sense.

"It seems pretty safe to me," Bane remarked, getting a close look of the base for the first time. It had been dark when they first left the place hours ago, and they weren't really in the mood of studying the base anyway. Now that he finally got to look at it, he was very glad to find that there were no moats or spikes or anything especially dangerous-looking around the place—it was basically a normal building.

"Yeah, it looks safe, so let's go!" Yuuta, who had become fairly good friends with Bane in the past few hours, was ready to agree with everything Bane said.

Ootori frowned, worried. "Don't we need a plan or something?"

"Come on, we have so many guns. We don't need one," Momo told him with a grin.

"But _they_ have a lot of guns too," Ootori pointed out.

"Well, you have a point. But what kind of plan do you have?" Momo asked, putting down his guns.

"I think—" Ootori began, but before he could get any further, Fuji (the older one) interrupted him by firing a shot at one of the windows of the base. And Fuji was quite a good shot too—he hit the target right on. Others couldn't help wondering whether he spent all his time shooting things when he wasn't playing tennis.

"Fuji, that was just wonderful!" Eiji, always ready to compliment others, exclaimed in honest admiration.

"Nah, I'm just good because I practice with Wii Shooting a lot," Fuji told him with feigned modesty.

"Aniki, you have a Wii? Why didn't you tell me?" Yuuta cried.

"It's not my fault that you transferred schools," Fuji said innocently. "If you stayed at home, we could play Wii together. Think about it—why don't you move home, Yuuta?"

Yuuta thought about it. He was afraid of his brother, that much was a given, but then there was the Wii. The more he thought about it, the more he wanted to move home.

While Yuuta was still making what probably was the most difficult decision in his thirteen years of life, Saeki shouted "DOWN!" suddenly and everyone ducked. Luckily they played tennis and had good reflexes, or else some of them would have been hit by the bullets ricocheting off the windows.

"They are attacking us too," Ryoma muttered angrily, gritting his teeth and staying low.

"They can see us, but we can't see them. This is not good. What should we do?" Bane asked desperately.

"We can't fire at the windows. That would be pointless," Saeki commented thoughtfully. "We'd better just go in through the front door like brave people do."

"What if they locked the door?" Ryoma put in. "Besides, we are still kind of far from the front door. How can we get there without being hit? If Fuji-senpai had not shot at the window we could have kept this a secret attack, but now—"

"Geez, since Fuji is such a good shot we might as well just let him cover us while we make a dash to the doors," Marui said with a nonchalant shrug. "If the door is locked, I can open it anyway—Niou taught me how."

"Good idea! No wonder people call you the genius of Rikkai!" Everyone except Ryoma and Ootori (who were busily pointing out all the flaws in Marui's suggestion) said happily, and picked up their guns with enthusiasm. You have to wonder that if it is true that the older people are, the stupider they get.

"On the count of three, we run in," Momo declared hotheadedly. "Fuji-senpai, I have confidence in your kickass shooting skills."

"Thank you," Fuji said with an enigmatic smile.

"But aniki, what if you run out of bullets and have to change the magazine? Should we leave another person to help you out?" Yuuta asked.

"If the other person can't shoot, he may very well kill _us_," Marui argued.

"Saeki can stay with Fuji," Eiji suggested. "He's so good at blowguns."

"Hey, wait, blowguns and guns are very different." Saeki, like all Rokkaku people, was hotheaded and would never live down being left behind.

"It's all right, Yuuta. I can do it alone. I'm that good," Fuji said complacently.

"But aniki—"

"Yuuta, do you want to play Wii or not?" Fuji asked, smiling.

"Er... yes," Yuuta said.

"Good. Then it's settled. I'll cover you guys alone," Fuji concluded, still smiling. Yuuta shivered.

"All right, here goes! Three, two, one!" Momo yelled, and the hotheaded group of teenagers charged towards the front door of the base, screaming pointless slogans like "for the future of the world!" "Peace on Earth!" and "Save the trees", completely disregarding the fact that this would actually make them easier targets.

The door was not locked. Bane, who somehow got there first, kicked it open and they all rushed in. Their enemies in the base sent a shower of bullets at them, and they all dropped to the floor.

"We can't admit defeat now," Momo shouted. "We have guns too. Follow me, we'll crush them!" He knew that this was their best chance to get home safely. All the other unfortunate contestants in other Battle Royales never had this kind of luck—so how could he let such an opportunity slip away?

"We can't admit defeat now," a voice came from around the corner. "We have guns too. Follow ore-sama, we'll crush them!"

"They want to crush us, huh?_ I _won't let that hap—" Momo announced, when Ootori broke in, his voice quivering: "Um, I think that was our captain who just spoke."

"Your captain?" Momo asked in surprise. "But how could he get in here? Even if he's got enough money to buy Coach Ryuuzaki off, I still think—and didn't they say in the last broadcast that he died?"

"Hey, _our_ captain's here too. Tezuka! I thought you were dead!" Eiji cried, almost glomping a stern-looking Tezuka before he remembered that this was _Tezuka_ in question and Tezuka shalt not be glomped.

It turned out that the enemy who fired at them from the base were the group who had gotten there via the Majority Rules path underground and taken over control. They thought that there were other soldiers out there attacking them when Fuji fired at the window, and quickly reacted by shooting back. Luckily they found each other out so soon, or else they could very well killed their teammates—not that it wasn't the point of Battle Royales.

"Now that you guys have taken over the base, what are we fighting for, nfu?" Mizuki asked.

"We don't need to fight anymore. We've already made them deactivate everyone's collars. The game is over," Tachibana explained.

"You guys should have said so by broadcast or something!" Ryoma shouted. He wondered, yet again, why all senpai were idiots.

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TBC. The next chapter will be the last:) Thanks for reading! Reviews will always be welcome.


	38. Chapter 38

After the people in the base had finally figured out how to use the broadcast system and announced to everyone else on the island that the game was over, the fleet of ships that Atobe's dad had dispatched picked them up and took them home. The next day was a weekday and the students had to go to school without even getting a few days off, and everything went back to normal. It was as if the day on the island had never happened. When the students remembered their experience in the program, they actually felt kind of nostalgic—they were busy students who had exams every day after all, so the day of pointless games and relaxation on the island actually seemed now to be quite lovely.

Of course, it would be unfair to say that the day on the island had no effect in the students' lives. They all changed, at least a little, after the program.

Jiroh, said to be dead over the broadcast, was in fact quite all right. He had been sleeping peacefully as usual in his hole when a bug got in his collar and messed up the wiring, and was therefore counted as dead by Coach Ryuuzaki. He slept through the whole game and never once woke up to tell the others that he was not dead, so the others naturally believed that he was. He slept all the way until Atobe's henchmen pulled him out of the hole to place in a body bag. He then sat up with a bright smile and said "good morning," causing two of the men to have violent heart attacks.

Bane and Yuuta became good friends, exchanged IM addresses, and frequently chatted online about Yu-Gi-Oh GX cards. Yuuta moved home because his desire to play Wii was too great, though he still went to St. Rudolph. Fuji was very happy about this.

Rikkai was the only school that lost their captain, since Yukimura was, unlike Jiroh, really dead. Sanada went insane. The other senpai were busy preparing for their high school entrance exams and declined to be captain, so Kirihara took over the position. He gave the position of vice captain to the fake Sanada they picked up from the lake on the island.

Mizuki and Gakuto also became friends, however strange it may seem. It could be because Mizuki now knew the biggest secret in Hyoutei, that Atobe was losing hair, and thanked Gakuto for it.

The Hyoutei regulars realized that their custom of keeping their cell phones under their wigs was actually pretty useful, and therefore started to carry other things like ipods, wallets and student ID cards under them as well. Sengoku thought it a good idea too, so he kept his pigeon in his hair. It seemed that keeping pointless things in one's hair would soon become the biggest fad in Japan.

Atobe and Kisarazu Atsushi became good friends as well, but Atobe still could not distinguish Atsushi from his twin, which made Atsushi very sad. As for Kisarazu Ryou, he never believed that his teammates and twin were in a Battle Royale program and persisted in thinking that they were playing a giant prank on him.

Oishi still had stomachaches every day. Eiji and Momo played with blowguns all the time and slacked off in their practices, and even Kawamura and Kaidoh joined them sheepishly sometimes. Tezuka was still a good captain. Fuji smuggled quite a number of shotguns home and practiced shooting things whenever he was not playing tennis. Ryoma thought that his senpai were all crazy and was contemplating going back to America.

Shishido and Ootori still played pointless little games together. Shishido had become especially good at kendama—so good that he could do the most difficult "around the world" trick while standing on his head. Atobe and Jiroh started playing with racecars on the sidewalks at school, and it had also become a fad around Hyoutei.

Davide still made bad puns. Bane suggested that Saeki taught Davide to play with blowguns, and it worked surprisingly well—now that Davide had a straw in his mouth, he could not talk as much, and therefore could not make as many bad puns.

Kamio, who was unconscious, was rushed to a hospital and saved in time. Tachibana, who loved his teammates, cried for a whole day when he heard the good news. Shinji, however, felt nauseous whenever he was near Kamio, probably the after effect of dragging him around everywhere for such a long time. He swore never to speak to Kamio again, until poor Kamio promised to help him get a date with Kabaji.

Kabaji decided to become an engineer in the future and make a subway line in Papua New Guinea.

Jackal, who had been stuck in a hole for most of his time on the island, developed a fear of manholes. Every time he saw a manhole he cried. Marui thought he was a sissy and stopped talking to him. The other people stuck in holes did not have this kind of phobia: Aoi told everyone he met about it as if it were something he should be proud of, Gakuto remembered nothing about the hole since he had been so busy reading comic books down there, and Horio went about telling others that he was "Horio with two years of being-trapped-in-holes experience".

Yanagisawa had been worried that others would find out that he was a spy for Coach Ryuuzaki, but it turned out that no one even remembered that he was there. When he tried to speak to other St. Rudolph people about the Battle Royale, they all replied, "What? You were there too?"

Akutsu and Dan did not go back to Japan. They built a house on the island and had a wonderful life full of peace and cabbages. Their family in Japan thought that they were dead, and sad as it was, they could not do anything, since it was Battle Royale after all.

Hiyoshi was also still on the island, not because he chose to stay like Akutsu and Dan, but because the others forgot that he was there and therefore did not remember to pick him up. He lived on fish he caught from the river. Sometimes he would visit Akutsu and Dan and they would all drink tea together. They found the tea in one of the houses in the forest.

Sometimes the Rikkai people, especially Kirihara Akaya, would remember that they once had a gentle, wise dataman with small eyes on their team. The Hyoutei people, especially Mukahi Gakuto, also would remember that they once had a sexy, romantic genius with blue hair on their team. The Seigaku people, especially Kaidoh Kaoru, would also remember that they once had a dangerous, evil dataman with strange glasses on their team.

But they never saw these people anymore.

* * *

"Are we there yet? When will we reach the giant's house?" Yanagi wondered as he climbed upwards on the still growing enormous cabbage.

"I'm sure we'll get there soon," Oshitari assured him. "When we do, we'll stick our uniforms up there so the world will know that we got to the top."

"This is troublesome," Inui muttered. "I have to climb, push my glasses, and hold on to this black notebook at the same time. I don't have so many hands."

"You still kept your weapon? I've already thrown away my foil paper," Yanagi said with a gentle smile. "I have to admit, though, Sadaharu, that a notebook is a much better weapon than foil paper."

"If you are worried that someone will take it if you let go of it, you can write your name on it. If you don't have a pen, you can bite your finger until it bleeds and write with the blood," Oshitari suggested.

"Good idea," Inui said and did so. "Still, I have to say that it is only because of this Battle Royale that I could obtain this lovely black notebook. See the beautiful print on the cover? I guess I have to thank the program for this. I wonder how everyone else are doing down there?"

"They are probably all dead by now, since it's a Battle Royale after all." Yanagi sighed. "Their parents must feel very bad. But then, probably no one will remember them after a few years except their parents."

"Yeah," Oshitari said, feeling nostalgic. They had been climbing for such a long time that he almost felt old. "Inui, write everyone's name on your notebook. That way, even if people forget about them, at least their names will live forever in history."

Inui nodded. The fresh young faces of the others flashed past his mind. The memories, the lovely memories—they played tennis together, dug holes together, discussed the collars together—Inui realized just how much he really liked these other people.

He bit on another finger, scribbling furiously on his nice black notebook with the nicely printed words _Death Note_ on the cover. He knew that even if he had to bite on all his fingers and maybe Yanagi's as well, he would write everyone's name down.

"Sure. I'll let them live forever in history.

**The End****

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**

Not to be continued. Thanks for reading! Reviews are very welcome. I am very sorry that everyone died anyway. Though, as my lovely beta pointed out, Hiyoshi might survive since Inui and Yanagi will probably forget about him. xD

to kalista jia: Thanks for the review:D I'm really happy you liked it!

And to my awesome beta mysticLegend11: Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! :D You're the best:)


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